On the Sublime: A Field Model for Understanding the Affective-Rhetorical Event

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay re-reads Longinus’ On the Sublime via Deluzian affect theory, uncovering an implicit model that aids scholars in the analysis of intensely affective sparks and their subsequent rhetorical events. This model teaches scholars to analyze the field of potential for the generation of affect, determining the limits of that field by considering the rhetorical flaws that preclude the affect’s occurrence. The model extends beyond sublimity to other affects and thereby offers insights for critics who focus on the affective aspects of texts and contexts. Supplementing these foci, the model instructs critics to begin with affect in order to diagram the range of rhetorical moves within which different affects become potentialized. The example of soccer star Megan Rapinoe’s “audacious” statement about visiting the White House illustrates the model’s usefulness for understanding rhetorical emergence and consequence. The essay concludes by arguing for the import of similar sparks and of the field model for helping to understand rhetorical circulation today.