Perelman’s phenomenology of rhetoric: Foucault contests Chomsky’s complaint about media communicology in the age of Trump polemic

Abstract

AbstractThe analysis explores the main arguments of Noam Chomsky’s short book, Media Control that also reprints the monograph “The Journalist from Mars: How the ‘War on Terror’ Should Be Reported.” The problematic is Aristotelian rhetoric and Enlightenment rationality (justice) in civic discourse (Lógos) as compared to the thematic of dialogic reasonableness (Eulógos). Chomsky’s assumption of, and critique of, “old rhetoric” [Aristotle’s rhētorikḗ] is followed by a discussion of Chiam Perelman’s “new rhetoric” [presocratic poiētikḗ / epideiktikos / gērys] and his “incarnate adherence” (giving voice to) concept of the Universal Audience as a function of Epideictic argumentation. This is also a critique of Stephen Toulman’s neo-Aristotelian model of rhetorical “warrant” and its connection to Charles S. Peirce’s normative semiotic of the “argument cycle.” Heidegger’s and Lakoff’s concept of discourse framing is associated with Michel Foucault’s rhetoric concept of an ethic of social discourse for the common good (parrhesia) in the age of Umberto Eco’s hyperreality media that displays Baudrillard’s simulacra, such as Donald Trump.