NO, >9'

RHETORIC AS PRAXIS: A MODEL FOR DECONSTRUCTING

HERMENEUTIC DISCOURSE

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

University of North Texas in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE

By

Edwin M. James, B.A.

Denton, Texas

August 1993

James, Edwin M., Rhetoric as Praxis: A Model for

Deconstructing Hermeneutic Discourse. Master of Science

(Public Address and Communication), August 1993, 101 pp.,

1 illustration, bibliography, 144 titles.

This study proposes a model for the deconstruction of

nationalism. Nationalism is a discursive construct. This

construct manifests in ideologies and formalizes order.

Individuals should question these institutions in order to

achieve legitimate societal participation. This criticism

can be accomplished through self-reflection.

The model demonstrates that sanctioned individual(s)

provide interpretations of events. These interpretations

recycle authority. The hermeneutic obscures an individual's

understanding of the originating fact. Self-reflection

allows an individual, such as Malcolm X in the Nation of

Islam, to come closer to discovering the original fact.

Critiquing the hermeneutic can reveal the imperfections

of the message(s). Revealing the imperfections of an

ideology is the first step to the liberation of the

individual and society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The undertaking of this thesis would not have been

possible without the guidance and patience of others.

First, I am indebted to my thesis committee: Dr. Ralph

Hamlett, Dr. Ernest Mares, and Dr. John Allison. Dr.

Hamlett, the director of the thesis, provided priceless

insights into the ideas and the content of this project.

Not only was he a mentor of supreme wisdom, but he has been

and will continue to be a true friend. Dr. Mares and Dr.

Allison both have contributed significantly to this

scholastic venture. Their ideas for this thesis and during

the classroom have expanded my horizons as a student.

Second, I am truly grateful for the support, wisdom and

love that my parents, Arthur and Ann James, have unselfishly

given me throughout my life.

Third, I will always be indebted to Melanie Williams.

Her love and wisdom have been a beacon of hope throughout

the duration of my thesis. Her belief in me was everything.

Last, I am grateful to the members of the Department of

Communication Studies for their support of my efforts, and

other friends and family not mentioned here within. The

support of everyone shall never go unrecognized.

i i i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ..r ... r..

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION . ... . . ..

Statement of the problemContributory Studies .Significance of the StudyDesign of study......Notes...-...............

II. NATIONALISM

Historical Foundations . . . . . .Nationalism: A Discursive ConstructThe Nation of Islam..... ...Notes....-......................

III. HERMENEUTICS AND DECONSTRUCTION . .a. .

The Model: Rhetoric as Praxis . . .Macroscopic Application..... ...Notes.......-........... .....

IV. CONCLUSION..-..- .. ......... .. ...

Summary and Implications ... .Suggestions for Future Research . .Notes.............................

REFERENCE WORKS .-. -- -. " ..! a..

iv

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. Rhetoric as Praxis--A Critique of Hermeneutics . 48

V

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This study argues that individuals should question

instituted realities that govern their lives. One of the

more pervasive realities is nationalism. Questioning the

ideology of nationalism enables individuals to achieve

legitimate societal participation. This chapter provides

the foundation for this inquiry. The problem that raised

these questions will be discussed in the first section. In

the second section, contributory studies will be discussed.

The second section examines and evaluates the writings of

Jurgen Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The third section

will address the justification for this study. The chapter

concludes with the design of the study.

Statement of the Problem

Human interaction from the ancient to the modern era

poses a paradoxical dilemma for rhetorical scholars to

decipher. Individuals, as societal participants of

discursive constructs, are confronted by the universal

problem as with what they interact. From antiquity to the

present the question has been raised: What is reality?'

Furthermore, the connection of rhetoric and the perception

of reality has been an area of scholarly concern.2 The

I

2

problem seems to hinge on the answer to two questions: To

what extent is an instituted reality discursively

constructed?; and what extent should cognitive participation

play in the construction of reality? The next section

discusses the pertinent seminal rhetorical and philosophical

works that have raised the questions this study addresses.

Contributory Studies

The crux of the rhetorical problem at hand is the

relationship of communication between the discursive

participants and tradition. Two major figures of philosophy

have dealt with this question. First, Habermas has caught

the imagination of many rhetorical and philosophical

scholars.3 Although Habermas is not a rhetorician, per se,

his critical theory of communication appeals to rhetorical

scholars. His theory addresses an area often overlooked by

more traditional rhetorical approaches. This area is the

restoration of cognitive participation by all involved in

discursive transactions.

Second, Gadamer also has caught the attention of many

rhetorical and philosophical scholars because of his

alternate view of discursive participation.,4 The

communicative theory of Gadamer stems from hermeneutical

phenomenology, which explicates a different approach to the

participatory function of language.

The writings of Habermas and Gadamer are

philosophically opposed.5 First, Habermas argues that

3

societal participants should strive to free themselves from

an instituted reality.8 These instituted realities are

often rooted in tradition. It is tradition that Habermas

seeks to question. He contends that participation will free

individuals from the tyranny of tradition. Habermas

supports his arguments by providing scholars with an

exhaustive analysis of human knowledge and experience within

the public sphere.'

According to Habermas, three transcendental a priori

factors or universal conditions govern human experience and

activity. These factors include work, interaction, and

power. Humans work to provide the material aspects of

existence, interact in the created social groups, and

encounter the forms of power emanating from the discursively

constructed social order. Communication becomes

dysfunctional when unnecessary power controls human

existence in the guise of ideology.

Habermas argues that the process of critical theory or

critical thinking can be used to question the legitimacy of

ideologies. Through this process, which Habermas calls

praxis, humans can achieve a greater autonomy from

unnecessary forms of control. Praxis can be realized

through rhetoric or legitimate discursive participation. He

argues that the emancipation of humans from unwanted power

could lead to an ideal society. This society would be made

4

of free and equals who truly participate and understand the

discursive social and political world.

In contrast, Gadamer argues that discursive

participants should accept reality as -inextricably bound to

tradition. Language serves as a means of unfolding reality

based on history. In his seminal works, Gadamer discusses

the role of participatory language within the hermeneutic.8

The term hermeneutic originates from the Greek word

hermenuim meaning to 'announce' or to 'show.'9 To announce

or to show refers to unfolding the signification. For the

object that is announced to gain signification,

understanding is required. Thus, hermeneutics is bound to

the act of understanding. Gadamer states that "The

classical discipline concerned with the art of understanding

texts is hermeneutics.'"1

According to Gadamer, the hermeneutic is a 'field.'

This field functions as an active means of rediscovering the

'nodal' point of the artist's mind that renders an

understanding of a phenomenon. Hermeneutic understanding is

realized through language, which serves as a medium to allow

the whole experience of the world to unfold.

More importantly, the hermeneutic carries the weight of

history and tradition. The hermeneutic exists as an ever

growing web built upon a traditional foundation. Tradition,

a dimension of historical consciousness, participates with

cultural heritages and attempts to reactivate the past.

5

Language exists as the medium for participating with this

historical consciousness. Tradition regulates language

within the hermeneutic, allowing the interpreter to

experience and understand phenomena through the precedence

of authority. Participation, according to Gadamer, consists

of the interaction with the words and ideas of the past, not

the abnegation thereof.

Fundamentally, a rhetorical duel between liberation and

tradition occurs. Both Gadamer and Habermas recognize the

importance of discursive participation on the part of the

individual. However, the premise of their arguments

differs. Habermas argues that discursive participation

occurs when the individual questions the legitimacy of

tradition. On the other hand, Gadamer contends that the

individual's interaction with tradition qualifies as

discursive participation.

This study will attempt to synthesize the disparate

theories of Habermas and Gadamer by proposing a model. The

model, Rhetoric as Praxis, seeks to expand the understanding

of social and political discourse. The significance of the

study will be discussed in the next section.

Significance of the Study

The significance of the study is twofold: theory and

practice. First, the study finds its roots in the

empowerment of the critical interlocutor. Habermas

discusses the importance of the critic in the public sphere.

His attempt to emancipate the interlocutor from the confines

6

of tradition echoes the goal of the Frankfurt School: "The

knowledge of what Ought to be and the high moral tone of

human emancipation redefine themselves in the process of

newly discovering what Is, how it developed and what its

tendencies are." 1 This study seeks to pursue that goal.

Second, participation in the discursive process

historically has been an area addressed by rhetorical theory

and practice. Cicero foundationalized the practical

discipline of rhetoric or communication.12 The pragmatic

application of the ancient discipline of rhetoric adheres to

the doctrine of critical theory. Ciceronian thought and

critical theory examine the pragmatic significance of

discursive participants within the public and political

sphere. Civic participation by informed and critical

interlocutors serves as the goal of both.

A synthesis of the disparate positions of Habermas and

Gadamer could augment the perpetually growing study of

rhetoric consistent with Ciceronian tradition. The model

this study proposes conceptualizes Habermas' and Gadamer' s

arguments suggesting the place of critical thinking in civic

participation.

The discursive freedom from the application seeks to

foster a greater amount of legitimate interaction in a

democratic society. Legitimate interaction restores the

rhetorical nature of an authentic society of free and

7

equals. The justification of the study will be realized in

the method discussed in the following section.

Design of Study

The rest of the study will be organized in three

chapters. The second chapter presents the background of the

phenomenon that will be operationalized within the model.

First, the chapter will examine broadly the concept of

nationalism as a discursive construct realized through

ideology. Second, the Nation of Islam will be discussed.

In the third chapter the model of praxis is proposed and

operational i zed in the context of the Nation of Islam. The

fourth chapter addresses questions raised by the model and

suggests future areas of research.

NOTES

George Kennedy discusses the argumentative battles

concerning reality of the Sophists versus the Philosophers

during the early conception of rhetoric in his seminal

works: The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1963); and The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman

World (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972). For a modern

perspective of mediated realities examine Dan Nimmo and

James E. Combs, "How Real Is Real?" Mediated Political

Realities (New York: Longman, 1983) 1-18; and Michael

Parenti, Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment

(New York: St. Martins Press, 1992).

2 Robert Scott has provided the discipline of rhetoric

a profound examination of epistemic rhetoric in his seminal

work "On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic: Ten Years Later,"

Central States Speech Journal 27 (1976): 258-266.

3 For an in depth view of the importance to rhetorical

theorist of the critical theory of Habermas see: James A.

Aune, "The Contribution of Habermas to Rhetorical

Validity," The Journal of the American Forensic Association

16 (1979): 104-111; Brant R. Burleson, "On the Foundation

of Rationality: Toulmin, Habermas, and the 'a Priori' of

Reason," The Journal of the American Forensic Association

8

9

16 (1979): 112-127; Brant R. Burleson and Susan L. Kline,

"Habermas' Theory of Communication: A Critical Explication,"

Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979): 412-428; Donald P.

Cushman and David Dietrich, "A Critical Reconstruction of

Jurgen Habermas' Approach to Rhetoric as Social Philosophy,"

The Journal of American Forensic Association 16 (1979):

128-137; Thomas B. Farrell, "Habermas on Argumentation

Theory: Some Emerging Topics," The Journal of the American

Forensic Association 16 (1979): 77-82; Sonja K. Foss,

Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives

On Rhetoric, (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1985.); Sue

Curry Jansen, "Power and Knowledge: Toward a New Critical

Synthesis," Journal of Communication 33 (1983): 355-362;

Andrew King, Power and Communication (Prospect Heights:

Waveland, 1987); Susan L. Kline, "Toward a Linguistic

Interpretation of the Concept of Stasis," The Journal of

the American Forensic Association 16 (1979): 95-103; and

Joseph W. Wenzel, "Jurgen Habermas and the Dialectic

Perspective on Argumentation," The Journal of the American

Forensic Association 16 (1979): 83-94.

4 The hermeneutic phenomenology of Gadamer has become

an area of great inquiry for many communication scholars:

Jeffery L. Bineham, "The Cartesian Anxiety in Epistemic

Rhetoric: An Assessment of the Literature," Philosophy and

Rhetoric 23 (1990): 43-62; Marcelo Dascal, "Hermeneutic

Interpretation and Pragmatic Interpretation," Philosophy

10

and Rhetoric 22 (1989): 239-259; Stanley Deetz,

"Conceptualizing Human Understanding: Gadairner's Hermeneutic

and American Communication Studies," Communication

Quarterly 26 (1978): 12-23; Klaus Dockhorn, "Hans-Georg

Gadamer's Truth and Method," Philosophy and Rhetoric 13

(1980): 160-180; Arthur A. Felts, "Hermeneutic

Phenomenology: A Critique of Leonard Hawes' Conception,"

Communication Quarterly 26-4 (1978): 58-64; Leonard C.

Hawes, "Language-Use and Being: A Rejoinder,"

Communication Quarterly 26-4 (1978): 65-70; Leonard C.

Hawes, "Toward a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of

Communication," Communication Quarterly 25-3 (1977): 30-

41; Robert Hollinger, "Practical Reason and Hermeneutics,"

Philosophy and Rhetoric 18 (1985): 113-122; Michael J.

Hyde and Craig R. Smith, "Hermeneutics and Rhetoric: A Seen

but Unobserved Relationship," Quarterly Journal of Speech

65 (1979): 347-363; Gary B. Madison, "Coping With

Nietzsche's Legacy: Rorty, Derrida, Gadamer," Philosophy

Today 36 (1992): 3-19; J. E. Malpas, "Analysis and

Hermeneutics," Philosophy and Rhetoric 25 (1992): 93-123;

Dieter Misgeld, "On Gadamer's Hermeneutics," Philosophy of

the Social Sciences 9 (1079): 221-239; Joe A. Munshaw,

"The Structure of History and Dividing Phenomena For

Rhetorical Understanding," Central States Speech Journal

24 (1973): 29-42; Felix O. Murchadha, "Truth as a Problem

for Hermeneutics: Towards a Hermeneutics Theory of Truth,"

Philosophy and Rhetoric 36 (1992): 122-130; H. P. Rickman,

11

"Rhetorical Hermeneutics," Philosophy and Rhetoric 14

(1981): 100-111; Allen Scult. "The Relationship Between

Rhetoric and Hermeneutics Reconsidered," Central States

Speech Journal 34 (1983): 221-228; Thomas M. Seebolm,

"The Problem of Hermeneutics in Recent Anglo-American

Literature: Part I," Philosophy and Rhetoric 10 (1977):

180-198; Thomas M. Seeboim, "The Problem of Hermeneutics

in Recent Anglo-American Literature: Part II, " Philosophy

and Rhetoric 10 (1977): 263-275; and Shangyang Zhao,

"Rhetoric of Praxis: An Alternative Approach," Philosophy

and Rhetoric 24 (1991): 255-266.

5 To see the discussions of the debates between

Habermas and Gadamer, see: Jack Mendelson, "The Habermas-

Gadamer Debate," New German Critique 18 (1979): 44-73;

Dieter Misgeld, "Critical Theory and Hermeneutics: The

Debate Between Habermas and Gadamer," On Critical Theory,

ed. John O'Neill (New York: Seabury Press, 1976) 164-183;

Dieter Misgeld, "Discourse and Conversation: The Theory of

Communication Competence and Hermeneutics in the Light of

the debate Between Habermas and Gadamer," Cultural

Hermeneutics 4 (1977): 321-344; and Paul Ricoeur, "Ethics

and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue," Philosophy

Today 17 (1973): 153-165.

6 The seminal theories of Habermas can be found in

these sources: Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the

Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston:

12

Beacon, 1979); Jurgen Habermas, "History and Evolution,"

Telos 3 (1979): 5-44. Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and

Human Interests trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon,

1971); Jurgen Habermas, Jurgen Habermas on Society and

Politics: A Reader, ed. Steven Seidman (Boston: Beacon,

1989); Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans.

Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1979); Jurgen Habermas,

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans.

Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge:

MIT Press, 1990); Jurgen Habermas, ed., Observations on

"The Spiritual Situation of the Age", trans. Andrew

Buchwalter (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985); Jurgen Habermas,

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT

Press, 1987); and Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of

Communication Action, Volume 1: Reason and the

Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy

(Boston: Beacon, 1984).

7 Other theorists have scrutinized the significance of

Habermas' theory of human knowledge in the public sphere:

A. Brand, "Interests and the Growth of Knowledge--A

Comparison of Weber, Popper and Habermas," Netherlands'

Journal of Sociology 13 (1977): 11; Peter Hohendahl,

"Jurgen Habermas: 'The Public Sphere' (1964)," trans.

Patricia Russian New German Critique 3 (1974): 45-48;

Peter Uwe Hohendahl, "Critical Theory, Public Sphere and

Culture. Jurgen Habermas and his Critics," trans. Marc

13

Silberman New German Critique 16 (1979): 89-118; Koula

Mellos, "The Habermasian Perspective in the Critique of

Technocratic Consciousness," Revue de 1'Universite'

d'Ottawa 47 (1977): 427-451; and Robert X. Ware,

"Habermas's Evolutions," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12

(1982): 618.

8 For a more exhaustive view of Gadamers'

philosophical hermeneutics see: Hans-Georg Gadamer,

Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneut i cal Studies on

Plato, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale UP,

1980); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel's Dialectic: Five

Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New

Haven: Yale UP, 1976); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical

Hermeneutics, trans. David E. Linge (Berkeley: U of CA P,

1976); and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans.

Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd ed. (New

York: Crossroad, 1989).

9 Joseph J. Pilotta, "Presentational Thinking: A

Contemporary Hermeneutic of Communicative Action," Western

Journal of Speech Communication, 43 (1979): 288.

10 Gadamer, Truth 164.

11Richard Kilminster, Praxis and Method: a

Sociological Dialogue with Lukacs, Gramsci and the Early

Frankfurt School (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) 255.

14

12 Rhetoric as practice was first discussed by Cicero:

Cicero, The Basic Works of Cicero, ed. Moses Hades (New

York: Random House, 1951).

CHAPTER II

NATIONALISM

One of the many domestic problems that continues to

confront the United States as it progresses toward the

twenty-first century is citizen unrest, often crystallizing

in violent social movements of organized, marginalized

peoples. Many scholars have sought to explain these

movements either to provide solutions before violence occurs

or to understand the reasons why violence may have occurred.

Chapter II continues the discussion, focusing on the

black community headed by the Nation of Islam as a

nationalistic movement. This chapter argues that scholars

have difficulty defining nationalism because they do not

treat it as a rhetorical construct. The lack of definition

prevents social movements from being analyzed from the

perspective of nationalism. This chapter attempts to

overcome the definitional problem by suggesting that

nationalism exists as a discursive construct. First, the

historical relevance of nationalism will be presented.

Second, nationalism will be defined from a rhetorical

perspective. Finally, the chapter shows how the Nation of

Islam is a nationalistic movement for the black community.

15

16

Historical Foundations:The European Experience

Nationalism is a specter creeping from the nineteenth

century and continues to haunt the twentieth century.

Without adequate understanding, the phenomenon threatens

social stability in the twenty-first century. The purpose

of this section consists of facilitating better

understanding of the historical volatility of nationalism.

This section suggests that while nationalism may be a world-

wide phenomenon, its occurrence is primarily linked to the

European community. Discussion includes four integral

European nationalist moments.

Prior to the French Revolution of 1789, many of the

monarchs of western Europe existed as fountainheads of

political dominance; their power was unquestionable. The

Hobbesian legitimation of divine right of kings sanctioned

sovereign authority of the monarch over the people. 1

However, the French Revolution violently erased the

political foundations of the monarch serving as a catalyst

for a new epoch in Western civilization:

The King could no longer be King of France; hemust (if he stayed) be King of the French, for heowed his power to the people. . . Much of theRevolution's mystique went into that word citoyen.The Nation, then, was born--a community ofcitizens sharing equally in the rights and duties,not a class of hierarchy.2

The impact of the French Revolution irrevocably altered

the relationship of the people to the political institutions

of western Europe. The legacy of the Jacobins, led by

17

Maximilien Robespierre, injected a virus moving the people

of Europe to political action and identity. Because of the

French Revolution, nationalism became synonymous with the

people. The nation achieved its identity from the people

rather than the monarch.

However, the Treaty of Vienna (1815), drafted by Prince

von Clemens Metternich, restored the status quo of the

European monarchs. As a result, the acquired power of the

people was usurped by the 'anciene regime.' Powerless

because of the restored dynasts, the leaders of the people

perceived a need to rally the masses for a second movement.

The decade of the forties in the nineteenth century

served as fertile breeding ground for another popular

movement. Continued social, economic, and political strife

afflicted Europe. The resuscitated political dynasts of

western Europe did not legitimately address these issues so

the faith in the political institutions began to erode. The

veneration of the nation--the people--once again, superceded

the honor of the state apparatus.

When discontent reached its zenith, the violent

movement of the Revolution of 1848 spread like wildfire

throughout Europe. Citizen unrest, different nationalisms

around Europe, began to rise. On February 22-24, 1848, King

Louis Philippe was overthrown by an insurrection of the

'citoyens.' This violent overthrow of the government

created the newly founded French Republic. Within a matter

of a week, the revolution that began in Paris found its way

18

into the separate German principalities. During this

tumultuous period, thousands of people willingly lost their

lives in the name of the 'nation.'3

Nationalist movements in Europe continued to thrive

throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. For

example, the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy lasted,

for more than 50 years. The yoke of Austrian and French

imperial suppression silenced the voice of the indigenous

groups of Italy. The ideas of the nationalist movement,

Young Italy, was "dedicated to the expulsion of the

foreigners and the unification of a democratic republic of

Italy."4 In 1831, the leader of the popular movement,

Giuseppe Mazzini, wrote that "his aim was to organize a

truly Italian movement, to link all parts of Italy in a

single bond, to form a great Italian national association."5

The slow evolution of the Risorgimento (1815-1870),

eventually constructed a unified Italy.A

Nationalism, from its inception, was the attempt by the

people to have control over their own political destinies.

However, as the resources of nationalistic movements were

recognized, often hegemonies co-opted those powers for their

own Machiavellian uses. Instead of a vision emanating from

the people, political establishments imposed their vision on

the people for their own end.

German Nazism, for instance, was a volatile nationalist

movement to ravage the twentieth century European continent.

19

The nationalist doctrine promulgated by the dictatorship of

Adolf Hitler forced a mirror image of the ideology of the

Nazi Party on the people of Germany. The Nazi vision

claimed that the Aryans (the Germanic people) were destined

to rule the world because of the alleged inherent supremacy

of their race. Those people not of Teutonic decent were

considered impure. Accordingly, the debased people of the

world had to be conquered or exterminated.'

Nationalism, today, continues as an immense threat to

the security of the global community. Since the late

eighteenth century Europe has confronted a quagmire of

nationalists movements, originating from collective unrest.

For instance, nationalist groups currently are vying for

control over the former country of Yugoslavia.

Many leaders and scholars express their concerns for

the volatility of nationalism. John Major, the Prime

Minister of Great Britain, argued against the tendencies of

nationalism. In a Newsweek article, he supported the

efforts to form the European Community but lamented that the

force of nationalism is an acute obstacle to the unification

of Europe. Major notes that there are "aspirations across

the continent where nationality is strongly rooted, and

nationalism is a powerful force."8 The Russian Foreign

Minister, Andrei V. Kozyrev, claimed that "Today, ever more

often one needs to counter aggressive nationalism that

emerges as a new global threat."9 Leonard Doob asserts that

20

"nationalism is unquestionably one of the most important

problems, if not the most important one, of this century. "10

Other experts, as well, have recognized the significance of

nationalism as a threat to the stability of human affairs.

For the most part, studies of U.S. collective unrest

treat the discordant phenomena as a social movement.'2 This

treatment has been particularly the case regarding civic

unrest during the 1960s and 1970s. Approaching the

collectives from a nationalistic perspective for the most

part has been overlooked. This omission is so because in

the United States, nationalism is generally considered a

European disease. The United States is assumed to be a

'melting pot,' where nations end and the 'people' begin.

However, the existence of many nations within the United

States is without question. Walt Whitman, in Leaves of

Grass, noted: "Here is not merely a nation but a teeming

nation of nations."' 3 -- asynnationalism emerging from

nationalisms. "

The next section will argue that nationalism affects

the U.S. polity domestically. The reason that nationalism

is overlooked in collective unrest is due to definitional

problems. The section will review these perspectives.

Finally, nationalism will be defined as a rhetorical

construct. This definition will be used for the remainder

of the study.

21

National ism:A Discursive Construct

Many historians and political scientists have attempted

to define the phenomena of nationalism with limited success.

For example, in his seminal work, Nationalism: Myth and

Reality, Boyd Shafer claims that "A century of study of the

group loyalty that has powerfully motivated men in our time,

nationalism, has produced no precise and acceptable

definition.1"'5 Indeed, "Many French, British, German,

Italian, Russian, and American students have tried their

hand with varying but never complete success."'6 In the

Meaning of Nationalism, Louis Snyder points out that the

definition of nationalism hinges on relativity: "Nationalism

may mean whatever a given people, on the basis on their

historical experience, decide it to mean."17

The term 'nation' also tends to be definitionally

confusing. For instance, three approaches have been used to

decipher the term. First, E. J. Hobsbawn claims that the

"equation, nation = state = people, and especially sovereign

people, undoubtedly linked nation to territory, since

structure and definition of states were non territorial".'

Therefore, according to Hobsbawn, 'nation' and 'state,'

seemingly, mean the same thing. Second, Shafer's method of

analysis of 'nation' breaks down into three fundamental

components

(1) a definite state which in early modern timeshas been democratic or dictatorial, (2) a definiteterritory though it has varied in size and seldom

22

has been considered large enough, (3) a group ofpeople who possess a common culture--language,literature, history, and a common hope to livetogether in the future. 1 9

Finally, Snyder emphasizes the root meaning of 'nation:'

"Derived from the Latin natio, the basic term would seem to

indicate a people related by birth, and the quality of

innateness would seem to be vital in its meaning."20

Regardless of the definitional problems of nationalism,

many scholars have attempted to pinpoint its qualities.21

Kenneth Minogue defines nationalism "to be a love for an

abstraction of the nation, and that abstraction may have

none but the most tenuous connection with the concrete

national life."22 Hans Kahn describes nationalism as "a

state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual

is felt to be due to the nation-state."2 3 Also, Snyder

constructed a similar but more explicit meaning:

a condition of mind, feeling, or sentiment of agroup of people living in a well-definedgeographical area, speaking a common language,possessing a literature in which the aspirationsof the nation have been expressed, attached tocommon traditions and common customs, veneratingits own heroes, and, in some cases, having acommon religion.24

Furthermore, the esteemed historian, Carlton Hayes explained

that according to the dicta of nationalism,

each nationality should constitute a unitedindependent sovereign state, and that everynational state should expect and require of itscitizens not only unquestioning obedience andsupreme loyalty, not only as exclusive patriotism,but also an unshakable faith in this surpassingexcellence over all other nationalities and lofty

23

pride in its peculiarities and its destiny. Thisis nationalism and it is a modern phenomenon.25

Karl Deutsch breaks down nationalism into three

fundamental components: communication, culture, and

nationality. First, he argues that "larger group of persons

linked by such complementary habits and facilities of

communication [learned memories, symbols, and habits] we may

call a people.""2 6 Next, he contends, when forming a

culture, "a people forms a social, economic, and political

alignment of individuals from different social classes and

occupations, around a center and a leading group.""27

Finally, the culture struggles politically and socially to

form a nationality:

an alignment of large numbers of individuals fromthe middle and lower classes linked to regionalcenters and leading social groups by channels ofsocial communication and economic intercourse,both indirectly from link to link and directlywith the center.28

For students of history and political science, the

definition of nationalism often remains ambiguous. The

above discussed definitions provide excellent

interpretations. However, a multi-disciplinary approach may

provide alternative interpretations. By examining

nationalism as a discursive construct--a product of

communication--rather, than treating it exclusively as a

phenomenon for historians and political scientists, a better

understanding of nationalism might be achieved.

24

Nationalism is political movement foundationalized on

communication. As previously discussed, Deutsch recognized

that language and communication serve as the rudimentary

forces of nationalism. Furthermore, Hayes places language

as the "first and foremost" character of the components of

nationalism. 2 9 Rhetorical theory is useful for

understanding the communicative inventional process of

nationalism. The idea of nationalism is realized through

the hermeneutic. Gadamer contends that language actualizes

the hermeneutic. He asserts that "from language as a medium

. . . our whole experience of the world, and especially the

hermeneutic experience unfolds."30 The experience derived

from the hermeneutic gives humans a sense of their relevance

in the world:

The significance of the hermeneutical experienceis rather that, in contrast to all otherexperience of the world, language opens up acompletely new dimension, the profound dimensionfrom which tradition comes down to those nowliving. This has always been the true essence ofthe hearing, even before the invention of writing:that the hearer can listen to the legends, themyths, and the truths of the ancients.31

The experiential mode of the hermeneutic allows human beings

to enter the web of tradition. Consequently, tradition

invokes a significance of life for the hermeneutical

participant by interacting with history.

The point of view, advocated by Gadamer, echoes the

arguments of the founder of Conservatism, Edmund Burke.

Burke's organic conception of history suggests that

25

tradition governs the actions of the present and the future

generations.32 The renunciation of the past, both men

seemingly argue, destroys the relevance of the present and

the dreams of the future. Tradition, in this light, becomes

a point of reference and authority. The hermeneutic creates

an identity that is foundationalized on the recognized

tradition of the past and forges a purpose for the future.

Through the authoritarian hermeneutic, the vision of

nationalism arises. Dieter Misgeld discusses the

significance of the hermeneutic authority to existence:

Traditions, customs, and mores manifest theirsuperiority over our existence that they beredesigned in an unobtrusive fashion. Theirauthority asserts itself rather like the authorityof an expert when consulted.33

The institutionalized vision of nationalism mobilizes

followers to congregate around the message of the

hermeneutic that serves as a guide and referent for the

legitimation of future actions.

The communal sharing of the doctrine of the hermeneutic

is articulated by communication. As a result, the idea of

nationalism is actualized through discourse. According to

Andrew King, this discourse, mobilizational rhetoric, breaks

down into two fundamental components: episodic and systemic

mobilization. Episodic mobilization "characterizes the

passing victories of a dynamic, relatively open, mass

society."34 The leaders of the society "seek out and employ

the beliefs of the masses, current cultural obsessions, and

26

time honored slogans and shibboleths in buttressing their

appeals. . .. "35

The mass appeal of episodic rhetoric strives to

mobilize the followers by appealing to the accepted

traditions, myths, and enthymemes. These appeal to the

universal conscious of the followers:

The universality which rhetoric envisions is notthat of subsumption in an analytic judgement, butrather a universality that arises dialectically,in discourse, where the conclusion is reached byelevating contrary opinions to the common middlethrough the enthymeme38

Ernest Borman claims that "'persuasive' communication simply

repeats what the audience already knows."37 The cogent

power of the discourse is that it creates a constituency by

speaking accepted 'truths,' through the enthymeme.

Systemic rhetoric serves as the second component of

mobilizational communication. King argues that systemic

mobilization "differs from episodic mobilization as

absolutist ideology differs from opportunistic arguments."38

This discourse, according to King,

not only builds upon experiences and ideas alreadypresent within a constituency, it also seeks todefine the terms of public reality, to create newopinion, new consciousness, and a new way ofperceiving experience.39

Although different, the long-range goal of systemic

rhetoric is inextricably bound to the ideas promulgated by

episodic rhetoric. Systemic rhetoric co-opts the

opportunistic arguments of episodic rhetoric and constructs

27

the hermeneutic: a new vision, a world view or an ideology.

The visionary discourse of mobilizational communication

articulates the communal goal that the hermeneutically

active must reach.

The power of hermeneutical discourse is its immunity

from questions. The hermeneutic, or ideology of

nationalism, exists as a discursive construct that provides

an absolute understanding of the world. Recycled themes

sustain the means of interpretation of the world for the

nationalist.

In his book, Faces of Nationalism: New Realities and

Old Myths, Schafer isolates these themes:

1) The people believe the land belongs to them (orshould belong) to them, think of it as their own,and in diverse ways love it and oppose anydiminution of its size.2) The common culture generally includes language

. . or commonly understood languages . . . andcommon literature, common symbols, common customs,and common manners.3) Some dominant social . . . and economic . . .institutions [exist].4) [There is] A common independent or sovereignstate . . . or . . . , the desire for one. . . .5) [The people] have a shared belief in a commonhistory and often in a common ethnic origin,sometimes thought to be religious or racial. . . .6) [Followers have] Preference and esteem forfellow nationals . . . , those who share thecommon culture, institutions, interests, andheritage. . . .7) [The people have] A shared, a common pride. in the past and present achievements . . . and acommon sorrow in its tragedies. . . .8) [They have] A shared indifference or hostilityto other (not all) people similarly organized innations . . . especially if the other nationsseem to threaten the national security and hopes,the nation's survival in the present and future.9) [There is] A devotion to the entity (even iflittle comprehended) called the nation. . .10) [The adherents have] A shared hope that the

28

nation, as a group and the individuals belongingto it, will have a secure and happy future.40

These themes when taken together may comprise the

construct of nationalism. Arguably, nationalistic leaders

use discourse that draws from these themes to provide

followers a vision or hermeneutic to interpret the world.

As such, the themes become the ontology of the nationalist

movement.

This discursive construct of nationalism may be useful

for redefining U.S. social movements as nationalistic

movements. One such movement is the Nation of Islam. The

following section will provide the background of this

nationalist force.

The Nation of Islam:The Emergence of a Nation

Racial strife emerged as a major social phenomenon for

the United States once again in the late 1980s and early

1990s. The Civil Rights Movement that occurred during the

1960s did not alleviate the many racial fissures. Questions

had been left unanswered. The rifts that exist between the

various ethnicities in the United States today carry the

legacy of the rhetorical problem that existed years ago.

Ultimately, the societal disturbances today have

similar origins that gave rise to the various social

movements which were born in the 1960s. For example,

angered mobs in Southern Los Angeles participated in civic

violence, lootings and the destruction of properties in the

29

Spring of 1992. The impetus for the riots in Los Angeles

was the acquittal of police officers who many felt used

excessive force in the arrest of Rodney King. This instance

was considered to be racially motivated.

One of the major political movements to emerge in

reaction to racial inequality during the 1950s and 1960s was

the Nation of Islam, also known as the Black Muslims. Their

esteemed leader and prophet, Elijah Muhammad, shaped a

formal religious cult which grew to enormous proportions

during the 1950s and 1960s.4' The faction of black radicals

strove to create a vision for the African Americans to

overcome social injustices that existed in the United

States. The Nation of Islam sought "to resolve their

fundamental problem of identity and to provide a context for

their moral, cultural, and material advancement with the

limits set by the American scene."4 2

The vision of the movement suggested a rhetorical

dilemma that also confronted the European nationalist

movements. Peace was the discursive vision for the

followers of the Nation of Islam. Whereas, potential

confrontation, often the threat of violence to outsiders,

seemed to be its strategy. Perhaps viewing the Nation of

Islam as a nationalistic movement rather than as a social

movement could resolve the paradox.

An African American vision is problematic, but

nationalism as defined above offered a solution. First,

30

deprived of their past, the Africans existed as slaves, and

then were treated as second class citizens. The piecemeal

declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), which

allegedly freed the Africans from bondage, did not grant

them rights as full citizens of the United States.

Likewise, Article XV of the Constitution (1870) guaranteed

African Americans the right to vote, but carried little

validity until the Voting Rights Bill was passed in 1965--

nearly one hundred years later. Indeed, "Any interpretation

of the Black Experience must take into account the

frustrating denial of Blacks of even of the elementary

rights of humanity and citizenship for more than 200 of

their 300 years or so in this country." 4 3

Second, the Africans were displaced from their origins,

leaving their history in their homeland. Upon arrival in

the Americas, the slaves and their descendants were

inoculated with the history and traditions of the

Europeans.44

Education in schools negated the identity of the

African American. Without a formal education that included

the history of the African Americans, the identity of those

people would begin to whither.

Esteemed historian and sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois,

noted in 1897 that the African Americans' group life

constituted a rejected society:

First -- Negroes do not share the full nationallife because as a mass they have not reached asufficiently high grade culture.

31

Second -- They do not share the full national lifebecause there has always existed in America aconviction--varying in intensity, but alwayswidespread--that people of Negro blood should notbe admitted into the group life of the nation nomatter what the condition might be.45

The character of the African American was left

hermeneutically bankrupt. The ideas and history of the

Europeans were forced upon them. Furthermore, the mandated

denial of their cultural legacy left them without any

relative type of unity or nation.

Denied the fundamental right of self-awareness, the

African Americans sought for a means of unity. Nationalism,

furnished by the Nation of Islam, provided that unity.

Through solidarity, the African American could possibly

achieve self-awareness, and become hermeneutically active.

Contradicting the United States' 'melting pot' myth, the

movement for unity brought about ethnic hostilities that

still emerge as a threat to modern society.

In 1932, the Nation of Islam (The Lost Asiatic Tribe)

began its slow and persistent appeal to African Americans.

The ideological doctrine of the Muslamic theology, embraced

by the Nation of Islam, at one point, claimed nearly half a

million followers.46 The separatist discourse and ideology

of the Black Muslims provided a viable alternative to the

African American.

Its allure for the black community in the United States

centered around the ideology of nationalism. Even though

the doctrine of nationalism has mostly been a concern of the

32

European nations, it has existed strongly in the United

States through the Black Muslims. Indeed, "The Black

Muslims have made a science of black nationalism."47

A fundamental theme that drove the Nation of Islam was

the appeal to authority. Muhammad served as the pinnacle of

authority for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and

1960s. His authority remained unquestioned until a

political and theological rift occurred between him and

Malcolm X from 1962 to 1965.48

The discourse of Muhammad resonated the nationalistic

themes advanced by Hayes. For instance, Muhammad argued

that the only way the African American could absolutely

achieve self-improvement was to completely separate

him/herself from the United States by establishing an

autonomous nation-state. Allegedly, the Nation of Islam

could legitimately prosper by creating a political entity

that governed through self-rule. Annually, the Nation of

Islam submits a petition to the United States Federal

Government demanding the right to secede from the United

States. Point Four from that document reads:

We want our people in America whose parents or

grandparents were descendants from slaves, to beallowed to establish a separate state or territory

of their own, either on this continent orelsewhere. We believe that our former slavemasters are obligated to maintain and supply our

needs in this separate territory for the next 20or 25 years - until we are able to produce and

supply our needs. . . . We believe that our

contributions to this land and the sufferingforced on us by the white American justifies our

33

demand for complete separation in a state orterritory of our own. 49

The Black Muslims had never explicitly indicated the

acceptable location for the desired separate nation-state,

but the Southwest was featured as a prominent location.

Before his break with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X felt

that "nine or ten states would be enough."50

The Nation of Islam provided a hermeneutic for many

African Americans. Its doctrine attempted to proselytize

thousands of African Americans. Authoritative discourse

substantiated the ideology of the Nation of Islam. The next

chapter will present a model for the analysis of the

discourse of that ideology. The inventional process will be

deconstructed in to provide a better understanding of this

ideology.

NOTES

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1988).

2 Roland Stromberg, European Intellectual History

Since 1789, 5th ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentince Hall,

1990) 15.

3 For readings concerning the revolutions of 1848,

especially the German scene see: Donald S. Detwiler,

Germany: A Short History (Carbondale: S Illinois UP, 1976);

Marshall Dill, Germany: A Modern History (Ann Arbor: U of

Michigan P, 1961); Louis L. Snyder, German Nationalism:

The Tragedy of a People (Harrisburg, PN: Stackpole, 1952);

Veit Valentin, 1848: Chapters of German History, Trans.

Ethel Talbot Scheffauer (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1965); Karl

Marx and Frederick Engels, The Revolution of 1848-49,

Trans. S. Ryazanskaya (New York: International, 1972); P.

H. Noyes, Organization and Revolution : Working-Class

Association in the German Revolution of 1848-1849

(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966); and George Madison Preist,

Germany Since 1740 (Boston: Ginn, 1915).

' Harry Hearder, Italy: A Short History (Cambridge

UP, 1990) 169.

5 Edgar Holt, The Making of Italy: 1815-1870 (New

York: Antheum, 1971) 81.

34

35

6 For more readings concerning the Risorgimento see:

Derek Beales, The Risorgimento and the Unification of

Italy, Ed. G. R. Elton (London: George Allen & Unwin,

1971); Raymond Grew, A Sterner Plan for Italian Unity: The

Italian National Society in the Risorgimento (Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1963); Gwilyn 0. Griffith, Mazzini: Prophet

of Modern Europe (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.); and

Delis Mack Smith, ed., The Making of Italy: 1796-1870,

(New York: Walker and Co., 1968).

7 To get an in depth view into the death camps and

social ramification of Nazi Germany see: Gitta Sereny,

Into that Darkness (New York: Vintage, 1974); Richard

Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi

Germany 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1971).

8 John Major, "Why We Need Europe," Newsweek 14

December 1992: 54.

9 Thomas L. Friedman, "Russian Appeals to U.N. to

Safeguard Minorities," New York Times 23 Sept. 1992: A9.

10 Leonard W. Doob, Patriotism and Nationalism: Their

Psychological Foundations (New Haven: Yale UP, 1965).

"1Richard Alm, "EC Unity Cracks as Leaders Yield to

Nationalism," Dallas Morning News 14 Dec. 1992: 1D & 4D;

AP, "German Lawmakers OK European Unity Treaty," Dallas

Morning News 3 Dec. 1992: A20; and George Rodrigue,

36

"German Minorities Say Asylum Plan Won't End Terror,"

Dallas Morning News 9 Dec. 1992: A13.

12 Robert Cathcart, "Movements: Confrontation as

Rhetorical Forms," Southern Speech Communication Journal

43 (1978): 233-247; William Gamson, The Strategy of Social

Protest, 2nd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1990); Todd Gitlin,

The Whole World is Watching (Berkeley: U of CA P, 1980);

Leland Griffin, "The Rhetoric of Historical Movements,"

Quarterly Journal of Speech 38 (1952): 184-188; Calvin

McGee, "In Search of 'The People': A Rhetorical

Alternative," Quarterly Journal of Speech 61 (1975): 235-

249; Calvin McGee, "Social Movement: Phenomenon or

Meaning?" Central States Speech Journal 31 (1980): 233-

244; Francis Fox Piven and Richard A, Poor People

Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail (New York:

Vintage, 1979); and Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian,

Collective Behavior, 3rd ed. (Engle-Wood Cliffs: Prentice

Hall, 1987);

13 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Ed. Sculley Bradley

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1973).

14 Ralph A. Hamlett, "The Rhetoric of Synnationalism:

A Model of Foreign Policy Discourse," Diss. LSU, 1992.

15 Boyd Shafer, Nationalism: Myth and Reality (New

York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1955) 3.

16 Shafer, Nationalism: Myth and Reality 3.

37

17 Louis L. Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism (New

Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1954) 11.

18 E. J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780:

Program, Myth and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990)

19.

19 Shafer, Nationalism: Myth and Reality 61.

20 Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism 9.

21 John Breuilly, Nationalism and The State (New

York: St. Martin, 1982); Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and

Its Alternatives (New York: Knopf, 1969); Lloyd A.

Fallers, "Ideology and Culture in Uganda Nationalism,"

American Anthropology 63 (1961): 677-686; Ernest Gellner,

Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell UP); Liah

Greenfield, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity

(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992); Carlton J. H. Hayes,

France, A Nation of Patriots New York: Columbia UP, 1930);

Eugene Kamenka, Political Nationalism - The Evolution of

the Idea (New York: St. Martins Press, 1981); Hans Kohn,

The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1944); Hans

Kohn, Prelude to the Nation: The French and German

Experience, 1789-1815 (Princeton: Nostrand, 1967); Michael

Palumbo and William 0. Shanahan, eds., Nationalism: Essays

in Honor of Louis L, Snyder (Westport, Ct,: Greenwood,

1981); Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture, Trans. Ray

E. Chase (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee,

1937); Royal Institute of International Affairs,

38

Nationalism (London: Cass, 1963); D. J. Anthony Smith,

Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York

UP, 1979); D. J. Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism

(New York: Harper and Row, 1971); Louis L. Snyder, ed.,

The Dynamics of Nationalism, (Princeton: Van Nostrand,

1964); and Leonard Tivey, ed., The Nation-State: The

Formation of Modern Politics, (New York: St. Martins Press,

1976).

22 Kenneth Minogue, Nationalism (New York: Basic

Books, 1967) 23.

23 Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History,

ed. Louis L. Snyder, rev. ed. (New York: D. Van Nostrand,

1971) 9.

24 Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism 196-197.

25 Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New

York: Macmillan Co., 1928).

26 Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social

Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of

Nationalism (Cambridge: Technology Press of MIT and John

Wiley & Sons Inc., 1953) 70.

27 Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication 75.

28 Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication 75.

29 Carlton J. H. Hayes, Nationalism: A Religion (New

York: Macmillan Co., 1960) 3.

30 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Trans. Joel

39

Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall 2nd ed. (New York:

Crossroad, 1989) 457.

31 Gadamer, Truth and Method 462-463.

32 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution

(Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987).

33 Dieter Misgeld, "On Gadamer's Hermeneutics,"

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 9 (1979): 225-226.

34 Andrew King, Power and Communication (Prospect

Heights: Waveland, 1987) 41.

"5King, Power 41.

36 Klaus Dockhorn, "Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and

Method, " Phi1osophy and Rhetoric 13 (1980): 161.

37 Ernest G. Borman, "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision:

The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," Quarterly

Journal of Speech Communication 58 (1972): 396-407.

38 King, Power 43.

39 King, Power 42.

40 Boyd C. Shafer, Faces of Nationalism: New Realities

and Old Myths (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,

1972) 17-20.

41 C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961) 17.

42 E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for

an Identity in America (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969) vii.

40

43 Daniel C. Thompson, Sociology of the Black

Experience (Westport: Greenwood Press) 30.

44 Edward A. Johnson, A School History of the Negro

Race in America (New York: Goldman Co., 1911) III.

45 DuBois, W. E. B., W. E. B. DuBois Speaks: Speeches

and Addresses 1890-1919, Ed. Philip S. Foner (New York:

Pathfinder Books) 108.

4I Herald Dispatch (Los Angeles), 28 May 1959: 1, 4.

47 Lincoln, The Black Muslims 34.

48 Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, ed.

Alex Haley (New York: Ballatine Books, 1989) 266-382.

a Adine Sakuma McCord and William McCord. "Urbanism,

Racism and Class: Futurist Explorations in Black

Separatism." Black Separatism and Social Reality: Rhetoric

and Reason, ed. Raymond Hall. (New York: Pergamon, 1977).

s0 Lincoln, The Black Muslims 95.

CHAPTER III

HERMENEUTICS AND DECONSTRUCTION

Mens Thoughts are much according to theirInclination: Their Discourse and Speechesaccording to their Learning, and Infused Opinions;But their Deeds are after as they have beeneAccustomed.'

In his essay, "Of Custome and Education," Francis Bacon

noted that individual human expressions are governed by

instilled opinions and customs. The indoctrination of

opinions occurs through the institution of authority. The

institutionalized discursive control manifesting in

ideologies formalizes order and coherence over the world.

Ideology is a hermeneutic of tradition.

The hermeneutic of tradition is a means for, and the

preservation of, indoctrination. First, it exists as an

heuristic interpretive framework. Ontologically, the

discourse provides an encompassing world view for its

adherents. Existence is understandable through the

hermeneutic. Second, the hermeneutic legitimates agents of

that tradition. Sanctioned individual(s), those who control

the discourse, provide interpretations of events. These

interpretations recycle authority within the hermeneutic.

As such, the danger of an ideology is that the hermeneutic

of tradition obscures an individual's understanding of the

originating experience of fact.

41

42

This chapter argues that individuals can overcome the

immanent dangers of ideologies, perhaps promoting civic

harmony, by self-reflection. The act of self-reflection is

a type of critique. The critic should analyze the discourse

of the hermeneutic. In doing so, the imperfections of the

message(s) could be exposed. Revealing the imperfections of

an ideology is the first step to the liberation of the

individual and society.

Chapter III attempts to deconstruct the ideology of the

Nation of Islam through the means of the proposed model of

self-reflection: Rhetoric as Praxis. This chapter is

divided into two parts. The first section provides a basic

description of the model. The second part operationalizes

the model in the context of the Nation of Islam. First, the

dynamics of the opinion leaders within the Nation of Islam

will be discussed. Second, the section will suggest how

these leaders constructed a hermeneutic of theocratic

nationalism for their followers. Finally, Malcolm X's

discourse will be examined as a personification of praxis.

The Model:Rhetoric as Praxis

Gadamer asserts that the hermeneutic of tradition

constructs the ontological significance of humans as social

animals, which is realized through the historicity of

discourse. History provides the foundation for present and

future recontextualizations of fact. Microscopically,

'fact' is a phenomenon, naturally verified through an

43

individual's senses. For instance, if a child comes in

contact with fire, s/he sees the orange-red glow, hears the

crackle of the materials being consumed, smells that object,

and feels the heat. From these four senses, the child knows

the reality--the fact--of that particular fire.

Historicizing opinion from fact supplies a coping

mechanism for present and future by providing a context. As

C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards argue "when a context has

affected us in the past, the recurrence of merely a part of

the context will cause us to react in the way in which we

reacted before. "2 In the example above, the fire's

existence is opinion neutral. But, if the individual

happened to have had a negative experience, i.e, was burned,

s/he may draw cognitively from the information and abstract

an opinion of the fire. In this case, s/he recalls that

event not as its original existence, a mad dance of

electrons (fact).3 S/he forms an opinion: filtering

through his/her qualitative laden interpretative framework

of pain, s/he assesses the badness of the event. An opinion

is derived: "Fire is bad!" The referent for that

particular fire is subsumed within the 'badness-of-fire'

opinion. The opinion serves as a means of interpretation

for future fire events. These, although not necessarily

true fire events, suggest the sight, touch, smell, and/or

hearing of the broader context and are recontextualized to

elicit the response from the originating stimuli.

44

Macroscopically, historicizing recontextualizes

societal events in much the same way. However, legitimated

authority subsumes the fact and discursively constructs an

opinion. Microscopically, knowledge and understanding of

the world includes self-experiences and face-to-face

interactions with other individuals. In the previous

example, s/he assumed the level of expert for the particular

fire event. This individual experienced the fire.

For the most part, first hand experience does not occur

at the societal level where reality is filtered through

opinion leaders. For instance, in Communist regimes, the

Party borrowed postions argued by Karl Marx. Party leaders

constructed a reality in which the proletariate was

subjected to the tyranny of the bourgeoisie. Workers,

members of the proletariate, did not have to experience the

injustice committed by the bourgeoisie. Individuals were

told and accepted the Party's opinion.

Nimmo and Combs support this argument. The authors

contend that our societal knowledge of the world is second

hand, rather than being understood by first-hand

experiences. The understanding of the political world is

moderated through the means of mediation.

Few people learn about politics through directexperience; for most persons political realitiesare mediated through mass and group communication,a process resulting as much in the creation,transmission, and adoption of political fantasiesas realistic views of what takes place.4

45

Unable to transcend time and space, humans cannot

experience every phenomena in the political and social

world, so individuals depend on the interpretations of

mediated realities to come to an understanding of the world.

In turn, humans perceive the mediated evidence as a social

fact.

People's daily lives consist of direct, firsthandexperiences with events, places, other people,objects, and so on. . . . But a lot of thingshappen with which people do not deal directly.They hear, read, or see pictures of these things,imagine what took place, give them meaning, andincorporate these indirectly experienced thingsinto their pictures of the world, a second portionof their reality. 5

No single mediated reality exists. The owners of the

various medium all have different interpretations of a

single fact. Hence, a plethora of understandings and

mediated realities exist. Paul Watzlawick explains the

impact of having various realities mediated to people:

[T]he most dangerous delusion of all is that thereis only one reality. What there are, in fact, areso many different versions of reality; some ofwhich are contradictory, but all of which are theresults of communication and not reflections ofeternal, objective truths. 6

His argument suggests the existence of only one

objective reality. However, that reality is unobtainable

through various mediated realities, because of the opposing

interpretations. In sum, Nimmo and Combs provide three

conclusions with regards to reality:

(1) our everyday, taken-for-granted reality is a

delusion; (2) reality is created, or constructed,through communication not expressed by it; (3)

for any situation there is no single reality, no

46

one objective truth, but multiple subjectivelyderived realities.7

Mediated realities assume the level of fact and are

constructed by the discourse of legitimated opinion leaders.

The interpretive/historical context in -the

recontextualization of other events constructs a

hermeneutic. The hermebeutic in the above microscopic

example is that the individual perceives all fires are bad.

The individual is constrained to the singular sensorial

experience as well as to the qualitative interpretation.

His/her fear obscures the sight, hearing, smell and touch of

future fires. S/he approaches fire from the confining

judgment of the first opinion: 'fire-Is-bad.'

At the macroscopic level, constructed history serves as

a means for societal interpretations. As stated in the

example of the Communist Party, individuals did not have

suffer at the hands of the bourgeoisie. The world provided

them by the opinion leaders was heterogeneous. Utopia, or

its promise, was within the Communist vision. The

bourgeoisie, embodied as Captalism, was blamed for all

social injustice.

Opinions, such as the Communist doctrine, gain credence

because of the perceived power of traditional authority.

The opinion evolves, through discourse, into a hermeneutic,

an ideology. Because of the inherent faith in tradition,

individuals acknowledge the opinion of authority as being

correct. Furthermore, acceptance of the ideology diffuses

47

discussion and participation, because the words of the

opinion leaders have gained supremacy.

The hermeneutic at both the miscroscopic and

macroscopic levels dooms the individual to neurosis. In the

microscopic example, s/he cannot participate with the

benefits of fire. Macroscopically, s/he cannot participate

with societal reality. Possible advantages arriving from

the debate between competing societal ideas are lost. In

both instances, s/he confuses opinion with fact. All of the

sensorial or societal experiences are abstracted to one

thought.

To overcome these tendencies, self-reflection (praxis)

must occur. S/he must critically examine the hermeneutic

asking questions: Why is 'fire-is-bad.'?; or why is the

Communist Party correct? This inquiry is deconstruction,

whereby the individual attempts to discover the originating

fact. Through this process, the person may realize that

s/he has a personal/institutionalized reaction (hermeneutic)

resulting from a personal/authoritarian judgment (opinion)

that obscures the originating experience (fact). From the

answers, posed by self-reflection, the person may come to

realize that s/he is blinded (hermeneutic) to a thought

(opinion) of one event (fact). The result of praxis is that

s/he may empower him/herself to participate uniquely with

other personal and societal events.

Through praxis as rhetoric individuals can question

personal hermeneutics, and more importantly ideology,

48

manifest by authority. In doing so, humans may come closer

to the original fact. Although individuals may approach the

original fact, they will never be able to achieve absolute

knowledge of the fact, because they are originally divorced

from it by their personal historicity or that of opinion

leaders. Nevertheless, through legitimate self-reflection,

humans may come to a better understanding of the original

fact and selves. The model is graphically shown below:

,,. ACT

Fig. 1.

The next section will macroscopically operationalize the

model by analyzing the discourse of the Nation of Islam.

Macroscopic Application

Applying the model macroscopically to the Nation of

Islam begins with opinion. As discussed above, fact, in the

social and political world, is mediated by opinion leaders.

Opinion may be defined as the prejudice of authority.

Gadamer claims that the Enlightenment forced a negative

connotation upon prejudice. The objectivity of thought

deriving from the Enlightenment, discounted prejudice as

irrational relativism. However, Gadamer sees prejudice as a

49

positive concept. He defines prejudice as a "means of

judgment that is rendered before all the elements that

determine a situation have been finally examined."8

The predispositional factor of prejudice constructs the

bias for the individual. According to Gadamer, there seem

to be legitimate prejudices.

If we want to do justice to man's finite,historical mode of being, it is necessary tofundamentally rehabilitate the concept ofprejudice and acknowledge the fact that there arelegitimate prejudices.9

He sees prejudices inextricably bound to authority.

Furthermore, the wisdom of authority's prejudice supercedes

the individual's rationale and may reveal truth.

If the prestige of authority displaces one's ownjudgement, then authority is in fact a source ofprejudices. . . . Thus, acknowledging authorityis always connected with the idea that what theauthority says is not irrational and arbitrary butcan, in principle, be discovered to be true.10

Because of the position of authority, humans tend to accept

that opinion. Thus, authority assumes the role of the

decision maker because of its presumed superiority over the

individual.

Submission of an individual's thought to the opinion of

authority has been an area addressed by scholars since

antiquity. Plato argued in The Republic, that the common

person was unable to think and govern him/herself. The

wisdom of the Philosopher King(s) served as the

unquestionable governing voice." Centuries later

50

Machiavelli argued in The Prince that society is broken down

into two components: nobility and people. The authority

figure should have complete control over the people "[f]or

throughout the whole country he alone is recognized as being

entitled to allegiance."12 The monarch, according to Thomas

Hobbes embodies all the power of the commonwealth. The will

of the monarch becomes the will of the governed.

One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, bymutuall Covenants with one another, have madethemselves every one the Author, to the end he mayuse the strength and means of them all, as heshall think expedient, for their Peace and CommonDefense. 13

Authority is a type of elitism. As discussed above,

philosophers have examined the dynamics of authority and

elites. Theories of elites continue to be discussed by

modern scholars. C. Wright Mills sees authority and opinion

leaders as the 'power elite.' He defines the power elite as

men whose position enable them to transcend theordinary environments of ordinary men and women;they are in positions to make decisions havingmajor consequences. Whether they do or do notmake such decisions is less important than thefact that they do occupy such pivotal positions.14

The elites, according to Mills, sit atop the hierarchy and

govern society through decision making. "They occupy the

strategic command posts of the social structure, in which

they are now centered the effective means of power"15

Geraint Perry sees the function of elites as providing

form to the mass constituency. Without the leadership of

the elites society has no order.

51

Only the elite in the command posts of the society

gains an overall view. The perception of the mass

is fragmented. It is unable to see even the

purpose of its own activities since it does not

see what part they play in the total structure.

. . The mass is unable to act as a single unit

only when it is integrated from outside by theelite.16

The decision making authority of opinion leaders links

directly to the power of the hermeneutic. Gadamer claims

that the hermeneutic legitimizes the power of opinion

leaders. He claims that their authority embodies superior

knowledge, and the populace must accept the ideas and

opinions of authority.

[T]he authority of persons is ultimately based not

on the subjection and abdication of reason but on

the act of acknowledgment and knowledge--theknowledge, namely, that the other is superior to

oneself in judgement and insight and that for this

reason his judgement takes precedence--i.e. it has

priority over one's own. 17

Furthermore, he claims that "authority has nothing to do

with obedience but rather with knowledge."18

Gadamer asserts that because of authority's superior

knowledge, "[t]he prejudices that they implant are

legitimated by the person who presents them."' 9 Gadamer

goes on to say:

That which has been sanctioned by tradition and

custom has an authority that is nameless, and our

finite historical being is marked by the fact that

the authority of what has been handed down to us--

and not only what is clearly grounded--always has

power over our attitudes and behavior.2 0

Gadamer's position can be summarized as follows.

First, authority has a better understanding of the world.

52

Second, their opinion of the world is more valid because of

their greater knowledge. Third, their opinion instills

prejudices into the hermeneutically active. Finally, the

opinion and authority are legitimated by mass acceptance of

the inculcated opinion.

Even though Gadamer claims that people should not

blindly submit to authority, the nature of the hermeneutic

tends to define a passive audience that is unable to

transcend the hermeneutic and has no alternative but to

accept the opinion of the leaders. Gadamer argues that

"[w]hile under the persuasive spell of a speech the listener

for the moment cannot and ought not to indulge in critical

examination." 2 1 It is the function of authority to think

for the masses: "Authority, however, is responsible for

one's not using one's own reason at all."2 2

For the opinion of authority to be legitimate, the

audience cannot question the foundations of the opinion.

Participation, in Gadamarian terms, means to acknowledge the

authoritarian opinion. Allen Scult posits:

The interpreter's audience participates in thecreation of the understanding when it receives theinterpretation but does not affect theinterpreter's construction of the interpretationit receives." 23

Seemingly, the involvement by the audience is

negligible to the point of passivity. The discursive

opinion of authority stands as the final word. Questioning

the supreme will of authority leads to chastisement.

53

The Nation of Islam formed coherence through

unquestionable authority. Essien-Udom describes the

dynamics of authority within the Nation of Islam.

Authority in the Nation of Islam matters ofideology, theology, and policy resides solely inthe Messenger of Allah. He is the only leader of

the Nation. Ministers and other officers performleadership functions, although they deny that theyare leaders. Their authority comes from Muhammad,hence they must be respected and obeyed by thefollowers. 24

The hierarchical power of the Nation of Islam began

with Elijah Muhammad. He "is the later day equivalent of an

all-powerful theocratic ruler. He heads, by divine right,

with absolute authority, the counterpart of a church-

state."2 5 As the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad's power was

revered by the members of the Nation of Islam. 26 His

absolute stature among the nation allowed him to hold within

his hands supreme power.

Muhammad is known not only as "Messenger" and"Prophet" but also the "Spiritual Head of theMuslims in the West," "Divine Leader" and the"Reformer." His ministers most often refer to himas "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad" or as "TheMessenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation ofIslam in the Wilderness of North America.""27

Not only did he dictate by the consent of the Nation of

Islam, but he personally considered himself to be the

fountainhead of authority. He proclaimed that his personal

relationship with Allah guaranteed his authority.

I am not trembling. I am the man, I am the

Messenger. . . . I came directly from God. I am

guided by God. I am in communication with God,

and I know God. If God is not with me . .

54

protecting me, how can I come and say things noother man has said and get away with it?28

His Hobbesian stature of legitimated authority,

predicated on the will of Allah, constructed an absolute

theocratic power. To question the words of Muhammad, not

only challenged a man, but attacked the religion. Such

heresy would lead inevitably to ex-communication.

The ministers, who were appointed by Muhammad himself,

served directly below Muhammad. These people espoused the

doctrine promulgated by Muhammad. Their power centered

around the leader's teachings and his public pronouncements

concerning the ideas of the Nation of Islam. Statements

from the ministers only could be superceded by Muhammad.

The ideas of the Nation of Islam were unquestionable

because of the perceived supreme authority of first,

Muhammad, and second, the ministers of the separate temples.

Since their words were allegedly guided by the will of

Allah, the ideology or hermeneutic remained steadfast.

Hermeneutical understanding, as that of the Nation of

Islam, suggests a recycling of knowledge. Gadamer claims

that "the hermeneutical rule that we must understand the

whole in terms of the detail and the detail in terms of the

whole."29 In other words, to divorce the detail from the

whole, or vice versa, negates any type of relevant

understanding. Hermeneutics generates a circular perception

of understanding.

The anticipation of meaning in which the whole isenvisaged becomes actual understanding when the

55

parts that are determined by the whole themselvesalso determine this whole30

Gadamer argues that the circle is not explicit in

nature, it is neither subjective nor objective but

characterizes understanding as the interplay between

tradition and the interpreter. The anticipation or

prejudice of meaning that regulates an understanding of a

text is not an act of subjectivity. It proceeds from the

communal bond with tradition.

Tradition occurs through the constant process of

education from the opinion leaders. Tradition and

prejudices are not merely preconceptions into which

individuals enter. Individuals produce and interact with

tradition and prejudices to the extent that they understand

and participate in the construction of tradition. Thus, the

circle of understanding precipitates the ontological

structure of understanding. 31

The ontological act of understanding the world demands

interaction with the world's historical environment by the

hermeneutically active. Terry Hoy suggests:

Understanding is a "fusion of horizons" in whichevery encounter with tradition takes place withinhistorical consciousness, an experience of tensionof the traditional text and the present.32.

The hermeneutical participant comes to a holistic

understanding of various phenomena by reconstructing the

past to recontextualize the present.33

56

By participating with and constructing tradition,

authority or the opinion leaders are legitimated. The tacit

approval by the hermeneutically active of "making the text

speak" perpetuates the power. Gadamer claims that "the

meaning of 'belonging'--i.e., the element of tradition in

our historical hermeneutical activity--is fulfilled in the

commonality of fundamental, enabling prejudices.""

Acceptance of opinion seems to purport a powerful

communal understanding. This type of understanding "can be

something like an event, the unexpected and not planned for,

the recognition of a truth, which has overpowering reality

for us.""5 Indeed, "The task of hermeneutics is to clarify

this miracle of understanding, which is not a mysterious

communion of souls, but a sharing of common meaning. "36

To explain the hermeneutical situation of textuality,

Gadamer argues that "we found that this kind of undertaking,

'making the text speak', is not an arbitrary procedure that

we undertake on our own initiative."37 Individuals are

bound by expectations of the text through tradition.

According to Gadamer, humans exist as an integral

factor of tradition: ". . . the questioner is part of the

tradition and regards himself as addressed by it. This is

the truth of historically effected consciousness. "38

Moreover, "by renouncing the chimera of perfect

57

enlightenment, [the individual] is open to the experience of

history. "x3

In order for the "effective historical conscious" to be

expressed, the meaning of the text must be translated into

the language of the individual. 40 First, language allows

humans to be subsumed by the hermeneutic and to think

hermeneutically. Because of discursive commitment to the

hermeneutic, humans are unable to transcend it. Gadamer

states:

To think historically means, in fact, to performthe transposition that the concepts of the pastundergo when we try to think in them. To thinkhistorically always involves mediating betweenthose ideas and one's own thinking. To try to

escape one's own concepts in interpretation is not

only impossible, but manifestly absurd. Tointerpret means precisely to bring one's ownpreconceptions into play so that the text'smeaning can really be made to speak for us.41

Second, acquiring the meaning of the text through

interpretation "places the object . . . on the scale of

words."42 The "interpretation in the medium of language

itself shows what understanding always is: assimilating what

is said to the point that it becomes one's own."43

Subsequently, the absorption of the text by the

hermeneutically active through language constructs a world

view or ideology that is governed by traditional history.

Leonard Hawes sees hermeneutical understanding

as providing an apriori systems of forms

characteristic of the communicative--not history

as the study of disembodied old facts, but historyas it is constituted "from" the present in and

58

through the poetic and rhetoric ofcommunication ."44

Tradition is controlled by the legitimated opinion of

authority. In order to perpetuate its existence, authority

must discursively construct and sustain the hermeneutic.

Opinion leaders of the Nation of Islam were able to

provide a hermeneutic of theocratic nationalism that was

revered by the adherents through historicity. That history

provided a coherent identity for the converts. First, the

Nation of Islam constructed a new religio-tradition for

African Americans. The creed consisted of three fundamental

themes:

1. WE BELIEVE in the One God Whose proper Name isAllah.2. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Qur-an in theScriptures of all the Prophets of God.3. WE BELIEVE in the truth of the Bible, but we

believe that it has been tampered with and must bereinterpreted so that mankind will not be snaredby the falsehoods that have been added to it.45

The history did not deny assimilated religious beliefs

but suggested that the Bible had been defaced by Caucasian.

In order to exalt the identity of the African Americans and

condemn the past of the Caucasians, the Nation of Islam

constructed another history.

According to the history of the Nation of Islam, Allah

created the supreme being--the black African. Lesser forms

of humanity were created by Yacub, a great ancient

scientist. Through genetic experimentation, Yacub

discovered that mutations on the black gene could produce

59

brown, yellow, red and white complexions. Yacub, whom the

Bible refers to as Adam, intentionally created the white man

or the 'white devil.' Once his scheme was discovered, he

and his followers were cast out of Paradise (Asia) and sent

to the caves of Europe. In the caves of Europe, the 'white

devils' crawled on all fours, just as the beasts. According

to the will of Allah, the 'white devils' would rule the

world for six thousand years, until the Nation of Islam

would rise in 1914.46

According to Black Muslims, the destiny and eschatology

of the creed ensured the salvation of the converts.

[W]e are the people of God's choice, as it hasbeen written, that God will choose the rejectedand despised. We can find no other personsfitting this description in these last days morethan the so-called Negroes in America.47

Furthermore, the destruction of the white race, when the

judgment of the world would come, was guaranteed by the

creed.

The destruction of the present world will not mean

the destruction of all mankind, but only thedestruction of the devils (the Caucasians) andtheir religion (Christianity). It will be thejudgement of Allah, which is amply revealed in the

Book of Revelation as the War of Armageddon. . . .The destruction of the world will definitely occursome time before the year 2,000 A. D. and the year

1970 has been suggested by the Messenger, althoughthe exact date is known only to Allah.48

Second, the Nation of Islam's hermeneutic was a

construction of a new secular history for the African

American. As with the religious construction, this history

did not deny the past but drew from it. According to the

60

Black Muslims, 'white' American history subjected the

African to absolute misery. Malcolm X, as a devoted

minister, claimed that "We [the Africans] didn't land on

Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters--Plymouth Rock landed

on us!" 49

The Nation of Islam claimed that history had been

'whitened.' The white hegemony monopolized the ideas of

history. The deeds of the Africans had sometimes been

purposely omitted from the pages of history.

I have often observed the sin of omission andcommission on the part of the white authors. . . [who] studiously left out the many credibledeeds of the Negro. The general tone of most ofthe histories taught in our schools has been thatof inferiority of the Negro. 50

The Nation of Islam argued that the "black men had been

'brainwashed for hundreds of years.' Original Man was

black, in the continent called Africa where the human race

had emerged on the planet earth."51

According to Charles Lincoln, the Nation of Islam's

discursive construct seems to center around three factors:

"a disparagement of the white man and his culture, a

repudiation of the Negro identity and an appropriation of

Asiatic culture symbols."52 In other words, by co-opting

the history of the Asiatic culture, the followers could

discredit the achievements of the hegemony and elevate their

own.

61

Because of the crimes of history against African

Americans, the Nation of Islam claimed that African

Americans were faced with despicable living conditions.

Poverty, crime, drugs, and prostitution plagued many of the

neighborhoods of the black communities. The hermeneutic of

the Black Muslims defined these problems. The locus of

blame for the plight of the African Americans was the

'white' experience.53 Rejected the accepted history of

white Americans elevated the identity of the African

Americans. Thus, the historical discourse of the Nation of

Islam "employs the heritage of abuse and indignity to which

the Negro people in the United States have been subjected

and, perhaps more importantly, their common desire for self

improvement. "54

To alleviate the suffering of African Americans, the

Nation of Islam established a set of objectives. Muhammad

proclaimed four ambitions for the Nation of Islam in the

doctrine, "The Muslim Program: What We Want." These were

freedom, justice, equality of opportunity, and a separate

ethnic state. 55 Combined, these objectives set an absolute

goal that the Nation of Islam attempted to achieve. This

absolutist position made the Nation of Islam a nation within

a nation. Muhammad claimed:

We are a nation in a nation. . . . We want tobuild a nation that will be recognized as anation, that will be self respecting and receiverespect of the other nations of the earth. . .We must understand the importance of land to ournation. The first and most important reason that

62

the individual countries of Europe, Africa andAsia are recognized as nations is because theyoccupy a specific area of the earth.

56

The Nation of Islam foundationalized on the theocratic-

secular nationalist tendencies, constructed a hermeneutic--

a new world view or a new ideology. The ideology provided a

sense of significance for African American in the world.

According to the ideology of the Nation of Islam, the

African Americans would no longer be demarcated from other

societal participants. Indeed, a new society would be

constructed to replace the old one. A nation-state for the

Nation of Islam would guarantee legitimate civic

participation.

However, by providing individual African Americans with

a hermeneutic of the Nation of Islam that sought to replace

the existing world view, the inevitable cycle of mediated

distortion continued. Participation envisaged by the

ideology gave only a perceived participation. Even though

African Americans had the common experience of subjection,

Black Muslamic reality was mediated by the opinion leaders

of the Nation of Islam. The adherents of the ideology were

not real participants, they were captives of a new ideology.

To overcome the limitations of an ideology, dominance

of authority, and lack of participation, the individual must

critique the ideology. Praxis critiques ideology. To

demonstrate this assertion, the discussion turns to the role

of praxis in deconstructing the hermeneutic of the Nation of

Islam.

63

Praxis is an active function of critical theory. As

such, praxis expresses a different end than that of

hermeneutics. Hermeneutics perpetuates tradition. The

ultimate goal of praxis is the liberation of the individual

from tradition. Misgeld discusses the difference between

critical theory and hermeneutics:

Critical theory is not hermeneutics: it aims at acritique of society and our history. It isoriented toward emancipation from our historicalpast, in so far as this history can be seen as ahistory of the exercise of domination andrepression,.57

Liberation of the individual occurs because of self-

reflection, a type of deconstruction. Catherine Belsey

describes deconstruction as

the analysis of the process and conditions of its[text] construction out of the availablediscourses. . . . The object of deconstructingthe text is to examine the process of itsproduction--not the private experience of theindividual author, but the mode of production, thematerials and their arrangement in the work.58

Praxis is the self-reflecting discursive deconstruction

of the text. Habermas describes self-reflection as "at once

intuition and emancipation, comprehension and liberation

from dogmatic dependence."59 In its active process, the

"act of self-reflection that 'changes a life' is a movement

of emancipation."5 0 Praxis as rhetoric may be seen as

movement arising from the critical art of discursive inquiry

that allows the critic to transcend the hermeneutic of

64

tradition and construct an alternate interpretation of the

original factual phenomenon.

By deconstructing a text the critic is empowered. If

the hermeneutically active does not enter the mode of

deconstruction (praxis), the individual relies on the

answers espoused by the dogma sanctioned by authority and

exists as a dogmatist. Habermas describes the dogmatist as

one who

lives in dispersal as a dependent subject that isnot only determined by objects but is itself madeinto a thing. He leads an unfree existence,because he does not become conscious of his self-reflecting self-activity. 6 1

Self-reflection (praxis) allows the individual to

discover alternate interpretations that may be opposed to

the prevailing authoritarian dogmatism of the hermeneutic.

Thus, the critic avoids dependence on the opinion of the

author of the text. The individual moves to a more

autonomous existence.

Emancipation may occur if a vocabulary of praxis

exists. This vocabulary is required to question the

validity of the hermeneutic leading to a better

understanding of the original fact. Herbert Marcuse

discusses the need for a new language and vocabulary to

eradicate discursive domination:

The new sensibility and the new consciousnesswhich are to project and guide such reconstructiondemand a new language to define and communicatethe new "values" (language in the wider sensewhich includes words, images, gestures, tones).It has been said that the degree to which arevolution is developing qualitatively different

65

social conditions and relationships may be perhapsbe indicated by the development of a differentlanguage: the rupture with the continuum ofdomination must also be a rupture with thevocabulary of domination. 6 2

Rhetoric as probability arguably serves as the means by

which to question the absolutes of the hermeneutic. Through

the use of this more legitimate vocabulary of rhetoric, the

critic can discursively participate with history. In other

words, by discursively interacting with the ideas of

tradition, as opposed to blindly accepting them, the critic

can become a constructor of his/her reality rather than

being a victim of the hermeneutic.

Habermas describes this rhetoric of probability as a

'rationally motivated recognition.' His description can be

used by the self-reflective participants as the new

vocabulary for emancipation from ideologies. First, the

validity claim of assertion must be the exclusive object of

discussion. Second, the participant themes and

contributions must not be restricted. Third, no force must

be used except that of the better argument. Finally, all

motives must be excluded except the cooperative search for

truth. 6 3

In sum the rhetoric of emancipation offers two

ontological dimensions for the individual. The first is a

rational dimension. The individual is freed from the

ideology. The ideology no longer exists as a vanguard of

interpretations but is revealed as an object of dominance.

66

Second, the rational dimension suggests an ethical domain.

Exposing the ideology as an object of domination allows the

individual the freedom to express his/her will. To

recognize the ideology in its true appearance, distorted

communication and the dominance of tradition, the individual

achieves liberation and true participation.64

The concept of an emancipated people is "as much an

ethical as a rational; it is critical as well as descriptive

and in this respect its historical and political telos is

effectively utopian."65 Even though the end result may be

utopian in nature, individuals, to achieve autonomy, should

strive for such an existence. To do so would lead to a

better self-understanding.

Malcolm X, as he attempted to assess the Nation of

Islam, arguably personified praxis. Before leaving the

Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, although a leader of the

movement, was what Habermas describes as a dogmatist.

Malcolm X asserted that his twelve year association with the

hermeneutic was one ". . . of never thinking for as much as

five minutes about myself . . .. "" After leaving the

organization, Malcolm X stated in a New York Times' article

that:

I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat andunder someone else's control. I feel what I'mthinking and saying now is for myself. Before itwas for and by the guidance of Elijah Muhammad.Now I think with my own mind . . . .67

67

Malcolm X's movement toward the deconstruction of the

Nation of Islam occurred because of his questioning the

authoritative opinion of the hermeneutic. He asserted:

The thing that you have to understand aboutthose of us in the Black Muslim movement was thatall of us believed 100 per cent in the divinity ofElijah Muhammad. We believed in him. We actuallybelieved that God, in Detroit by the way, that Godhad taught him and all of that. I always believedthat he believed it himself. And I was shockedwhen I found out that he himself didn't believeit.68

The conclusion he reached was that many individuals within

the organization were not wrong. However, the fault of the

nation was that the people were "being misled by the

hierarchy. "69

This realization destroyed Malcolm X's world view. He

described the event as one in which he "felt as though

something in nature had failed, like the sun, or the stars.

It was that incredible a phenomenon . . . something too

stupendous to conceive."70

Malcolm X overcame the ontological vacuum through

praxis. As stated above, self-reflection (praxis) allows

the individual to discover alternate interpretations that

may be opposed to the prevailing authoritarian dogmatism of

the hermeneutic. As Malcolm X argued,

And when that shock reached me, then I began tolook everywhere else and try and get a betterunderstanding of the things that confront all of

68

us so that we can get together in some kind of wayto offset them.71

This process developed along three lines. These

included a "wider contact with white men who were not the

'devils' he had thought they were"; "a growing doubt about

the authenticity of Elijah Muhammad's version of the Muslim

religion--a doubt that grew into a certainty with more

knowledge and more experience"; and, "a number of prolonged

trips to Mecca . . . that . . . [led] to the conclusion that

he had yet to discover Islam."72

The three means provided him with a new inventional

framework. First, he reassessed racial relationships.

I believe in recognizing every human being as ahuman being--neither white, black, brown or red;. . I believe in a society in which people canlive like human beings on the basis of equality.73

He later concluded that "My friends today are black, brown,

red, yellow, and white!" 74

Second, Malcolm X reappraised the Islamic religion.

The religion he discovered was one separated from other

religions only by language.

I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong withbeing a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion ofIslam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah asthe God. Those of you who are Christians probablybelieve in the same God, because I think youbelieve in the God who created the universe.That's the one we believe in, the one who createdthe universe--the one difference being you callhim God and we call him Allah. The Jews calls himJehovah. If you could understand Hebrew, youwould probably call him Jehovah too. If you couldunderstand Arabic, you would probably call himAllah.75

69

Malcolm X would later concede that he was one "of the

leaders in projecting the Muslim movement and causing so may

people to believe in the distorted version of Islam . . . ."7

Finally, and not mutually exclusive from the other

lines, were Malcolm X's pilgrimages to Mecca. These trips

further called into question the authority of the Nation of

Islam and its religio-racist tendency. Malcolm X noted that

Elijah Muhammad had taught us that the white mancould not enter into Mecca in Arabia and all of uswho followed him, we believed it . . . . When Igot over there and went to Mecca and saw thesepeople who were blond and blue-eyed and pale-skinned and all those things, I said, "Well," butI watched them closely.77

He later observed:

Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitalityand the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood asis practiced by people of all colors and raceshere in this ancient holyland, the home ofAbraham, Muhammad and all the other prophets ofthe Holy Scriptures. For the past week I havebeen utterly speechless and spellbound by thegraciousness I see displayed all around me bypeople of all colors.78

These experiences equipped Malcolm X with a new

vocabulary that enabled him "finally to muster the nerve,

and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for

[himself]."79 This self-reflection lead to a new

inventional framework. First, he began to recognize that

his ontological existence in the Nation of Islam was founded

on someone other than himself.

I've had enough of someone else's propaganda. .. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm forjustice, no matter who it is for or against. I'ma human being first and foremost, and as such I'm

70

for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as awhole. 8 0

His more rational stance was "sitting down and analyzing the

possibilities" before following the dictates of others. 8 1

Second, his discourse began to reflect the more ethical

domain of rhetoric. He realized that an individual's free

will serves as a fundamental element to a more ethical

existence. He claimed that he began to respect "every man's

right to believe whatever his intelligence tells him is

intellectually sound, and I expect everyone else to respect

my right to believe likewise. "82

In the past, I have permitted myself to be used tomake sweeping indictments of all white people, andthese generalizations have caused injuries to somewhite people who did not deserve them. Because ofthe spiritual rebirth which I was blessed toundergo as a result of my pilgrimage to the HolyCity of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweepingindictments of one race.

In the future, I intend to be careful not tosentence anyone who has not been proven guilty. Iam not a racist and do not subscribe to any of thetenets of racism. In all honesty and sincerity itcan be stated that I wish nothing but freedom,justice and equality: life, liberty and pursuitof happiness--for all people. 8 3

Possibly because of this more rational and ethical

approach to reality, he denied one of the major tenets of

the Black Muslims--a separate black state. Instead, his

vision was that of "a society in which people can live like

human beings on the basis of equality." 84

Malcolm X presents a persona reflecting rhetoric as

praxis. His ever changing discourse reveals critical

71

thinking. By entering the active mode of self-reflection,

Malcolm X was able to transcend the hermeneutic of the

Nation of Islam and search for the originating experience of

fact. Questioning the legitimacy of the authority and

opinion of Muhammad enabled him to construct his own opinion

from his perceived facts. More importantly, Malcolm X

assumed responsibility for those opinions.85 He argued that

he and others should be accountable and not relinquish

responsiblity to the label of a group.

And I also don't believe that groups should referto themselves as "leftists," "rightist," or"middle-ist." I think that they should just bewhatever they are and don't let people put labelson them--and don't ever put them on yourself.86

Because he was able to achieve autonomy, he moved closer to

authentic participation emancipating himself from the

hermeuti c.

This chapter has discussed the inventional process of

hermeneutical discourse by analyzing the discourse of the

Nation of Islam. Individuals are divorced from the

originating experience of fact, by the recontextualization

of hermeneutics. In the social and political world

institutionalized authority interprets reality according to

its will, and forms an opinion. The opinion, manifesting as

a hermeneutic or ideology, provides the ontological

significance of the adherents. The approval of authority

and its opinion perpetuates the hermeneutical cycle and

gives the hermeneutically active the illusion of

72

participation. Hierarchically, the opinion of authority is

an object of domination because the individual becomes

dependent on the hermeneutic. S/he does not construct

reality, per se. S/he becomes a victim of authority's

opinion.

This chapter proposes a model that deconstructs the

hermeneutic of tradition through rhetoric. Deconstructing

the hermeneutic empowers the individual to achieve

liberation and autonomy from the hermeneutic of tradition.

Autonomy yields an ethical and rational existence. Malcolm

X seemed to reflect these aspects of deconstructive critical

thinking. His critical inquiry of the Nation of Islam

questioned the validity of the nation and its authority.

The next chapter will discuss the ramifications of the

study.

NOTES

1 Francis Bacon, "Of Custome and Education," Bacon's

Essays and Colours of Good and Evil, ed. W. Aldis Wright

(London: Macmillan and Co., 1890) 162.

2 C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of

Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought

and the Science of Symbolism, 8th ed. (New York: Harcourt,

Brace, and World, Inc., 1946) 53.

3 Alfred Korzbski, Science and Sanity, (Lakeville,

Connecticut: The International Non-Aristotlean Library Pubi.

Co., 1948) 387.

4 Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs, Political Mediated

Realities (New York: Longman, 1983) xv.

5 Nimmo and Combs, Political Mediated Realities 1-2.

6 Paul Watzlawick, How Real is Real? (New York:

Random House, 1976) xi.

7 Nimmo and Combs, Political Mediated Realities 3.

8 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel

Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd. ed. (New York:

Crossroads, 1989) 270.

9 Gadamer, Truth 277.

73

74

10 Gadamer, Truth 279-280.

11 Plato, The Republic, trans. Francis MacDonald

Cornford, New York: Oxford UP, 1962.

12 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George

Bull (London: Penguin, 1981) 44.

13 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson

(London: Penguin, 1988) 228.

14 C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford

UP, 1957) 4.

15 Mills, The Power Elite 4.

16 Perry Geraint, Political Elites (New York:

Frederick A. Praeger, 1969) 55.

17 Gadamer, Truth 279.

18 Gadamer, Truth 279.

19 Gadamer, Truth 280.

20 Gadamer, Truth 280.

21 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics,

trans. David E. Linge (Berkley: U of California P, 1976)

23-24.

22 Gadamer, Truth 277.

23 Allen Scult, "The Relationship Between Rhetoric and

Hermeneutics Reconsidered." Central States Speech Journal

34 (1983): 222-223.

75

24 E. U. Essian-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for

an Identity in America (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969) 143.

25 Theodore Draper, The Rediscovery of Black

Nationalism, (New York: Viking Press, 1970) 84.

26 Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, ed.

Alex Haley (New York: Ballantine, 1989) 288.

27 C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) 183.

28 Lincoln, The Black Muslims 183.

29 Gadamer, Truth 291.

30 Gadamer, Truth 291.

31 Gadamer, Truth 293.

32 Terry Hoy, Praxis, Liberation, and Truth: Essay on

Gadamer, Taylor, Polanyi, Habermas, Gutierrez, and Ricoeur

(Lanham: U Press of America, 1988) 12.

33 Gadamer, Truth 166-167.

34 Gadamer, Truth 295.

35 Dieter Misgeld, "On Gadamer's Hermeneutics,"

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 9 (1979): 224.

36 Gadamer, Truth 292.

37 Gadamer, Truth 377.

38 Gadamer, Truth 377.

39 Gadamer, Truth 377-378.

76

40 Gadamer, Truth 396.

41 Gadamer, Truth 397.

42 Gadamer, Truth 398.

43 Gadamer, Truth 398.

44 Leonard C. Hawes, "Toward a Hermeneutic

Phenomenology of Communication," Communication Quarterly

25 (1977): 32.

45 Elijah Muhammad, "The Muslim Program," Muhammad

Speaks VII, No. 22, (April 25 1969): 40.

46 X, The Autobiography 164-167; Essien-Udom, Black

Nationalism: A Search 133-135; Raymond L. Hall, Black

Separatism in the United States (Hanover: UP of New

England, 1978) 98-101; Lincoln, The Black Muslims 76-77.

Rodney Carlisle, The Roots of Black Nationalism (Port

Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1975) 142-143; and John White,

Black Leadership in America 1895-1968 (London: Longman,

1985) 104.

47 Elijah Muhammad, "The Muslim Program," Muhammad

Speaks VII, No. 22, (April 25 1969): 40.

48 Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for 138-

139.

49 X, The Autobiography 201.

50 Edward A. Johnson, A School History of the Negro

Race in America (New York: Goldman Co., 1911) III.

77

51 X, The Autobiography 162.

52 Lincoln, The Black Muslims 50.

s3 X, The Autobiography 161-265; and Malcolm X,

Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George Breitman (New York: Grove

Weidenfeld 1990).

54 Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search 7.

55 Elijah Muhammad, "The Muslim Program," Muhammad

Speaks VII, No. 32 (April 25, 1969): 40.

56 Draper, The Rediscovery 80-81.

57 Dieter Misgeld, "Critical Theory and Hermeneutics:

The Debate Between Habermas and Gadamer," On Critical

Theory, ed. John O'Neill (New York: Seabury Press, 1976)

171.

58 Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London:

Routledge, 1989) 104; See also: Roland Barthes,

Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and

Wang, 1979); Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans.

David Allison (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973); Michel

Foucualt, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M.

Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972); and Michel

Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, trans. and ed. James

Harkness (Berkeley: U of California P, 1982).

59 Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests,

trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1971) 208.

78

60 Habermas, Knowledge 212.

61 Habermas, Knowledge 208.

62 Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1969) 39-40.

63 Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans.

Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) 107-108.

64 See: Jurgen Habermas, Communication and the

Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston:

Beacon, 1979); and Sonja K. Foss, Karen A. Foss and Robert

Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric (Prospect

Heights: Waveland Press, 1985) 213-239.

65 John O'Neill, "Critique and Remembrance," On

Critical Theory, ed. John O'Neill (New York: Seabury

Press, 1976) 7.

66 X, The Autobiography 306.

67 Cited in, Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George

Breitman, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990) 226.

68 X, Malcolm X Speaks 177.

69 X, Malcolm X Speaks 189.

70 X, The Autobiography 304.

71 X, Malcolm X Speaks 177.

72 X, The Autobiography xiii.

73 X, Malcolm X Speaks 197.

74

75 X,

76 !

77 X,

78

80

81

82

83

83 X,

84 X

85 X

86 X

The Autobiography

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

The Autobiography

The Autobiography

Malcolm X Speaks

The Autobiography

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

79

375.

162.

189.

162-163.

59.

306.

366.

203.

372.

58-59.

197.

189.

203-204.

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

This chapter concludes with a summary, discussion of

the implications, and suggestions for future research. The

first section summarizes the findings of the study that

human beings are governed by hermeneutical discourse. The

argument of the study claims that in order to achieve

legitimate societal participation, humans must question the

hermeneutic. The limitations of the study are suggested in

the final section. Possible areas of research are described

that could enhance the value of the proposed model.

Summary and Implications

The argument of the study stems from the theories of

Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jurgen Habermas. Gadamer asserts

that the ontological significance of humans as social

animals is realized through the historicity of discourse

manifest in the hermeneutic of tradition. Historical

discourse positions individuals in the broader context of

society. Habermas, on the other hand, contends that the

hermeneutic of tradition propagates the domination of

individuals and society as a whole. According to Habermas,

the individual's emancipatory interests naturally should

drive the individual to question the hermeneutic through

80

81

self-reflection seeking a more autonomous position in

society. This study proposes a model that synthesizes the

positions of Gadamer and Habermas. In this study, the model

was operationalized in the framework of nationalism. More

explicitly, the model was used to deconstruct the

hermeneutic of the Nation of Islam.

The fundamental implication of this study is that the

discursive process of hermeneutics obscures the rhetorical

tradition. The precept of traditional rhetoric asserts the

denial of an absolute truth. George Kennedy claims that

rhetoric is only "useful and legitimate" when more than one

side is presented and "the choice between them can be

clearly perceived and intelligently made."1

Informed choice serves as a means to an end. The end,

according to Ciceronian thought, is that individuals, after

arriving at a probable truth, will be able to make informed

decisions benefiting both the public and political spheres.

The hermeneutic harms this ideal. First hermeneutics

supports the notion of an absolute truth. The hermeneutic

is a hegemonic interpretation of reality that is a

construction of a visionary world view. Its discursive

tenets cannot be questioned.

Second, this ideological vision restrains the social

and political participation of the hermeneutically active.

The opinion leaders govern the ideology. The adherents tend

to submit to the decisions of authority. John O'Neil states

82

that the "danger is that many people may be herded together

in the interests of their political leaders who have

community on their lips or in their plans but not in their

hearts."2 The people are provided answers and have an

excuse for their absence of legitimate participation.

This study argues for the pursuit of ethical existence

and legitimate societal participation within the bounds of

traditional rhetoric. These forms of civility are possible

only when the individual questions the hermeneutic. First,

the importance of critical thinking manifests when the

individual becomes aware that his/her will is the sole

object of submission. As Misgeld asserts:

Not all things, institutions, texts, or persons inthe world can lay similar claim to our attentionand there is no class of items in the world, bethey institutions or not, which we can single outin advance as having of necessity the 'right' toexpect the surrender of understanding andreflection. To surrender rather occurs in theprocess of understanding.3

Second, by exercising critical thought, the individual is

able to challenge hegemonies. Habermas claims that the

"order of authority is justified by falling back on

traditional world-views and a conventional civic ethic.,"4

These legitimizing forces of tradition dissolve "when they

are torn out of the interpretive systems that guarantee

continuity and identity."5

This study argues that praxis--the practice of critical

thought and process of confronting institutionalized

83

authority through self-reflection--empowers the individual.

The outcome is one whereby the individual achieves, at

least, partial emancipation from the domination of

tradition. His/her rational choice and authentic

participation in decision making assume more significance

for the individual.

While this study provides a means for deconstructing

hermeneutics, future research could benefit its application.

Such studies would make the model more comprehensive for

analyzing human discourse. These areas are suggested in the

next section.

Suggestions for Future Research

Admittedly, this method of discourse analysis has

limitations that need to be addressed to test the further

usefulness of the model. First, only one phenomenon is

addressed by the study. The model is operationalized by

analyzing the discourse of the Nation of Islam. The model

needs to be tested in other arenas of inquiry. Second, the

foundation of the model possibly parallels other fields of

scholarly inquiry. Integrating these related areas into the

model could reveal a more thorough explanation of human

discourse.

To address the first issue, other historical ideologies

could be used to test the model. One area suggested in

Chapter II is the growth of European nationalism. For

instance, the discourse promulgated by the leaders of the

French Revolution could be examined, i.e. Robespierre.

84

Also, the discourse of Giuseppe Mazzini, who led the Young

Italy nationalist movement could be analyzed. Both areas of

inquiry could provide pertinent insights into the

development of the ideology or hermeneutic of nation-state

nationalism.

Areas of inquiry are not limited to the eighteenth and

nineteenth century. Twentieth century ideologies are useful

subjects of inquiry, as well. For example, the discourse of

the ideology of environmentalism could be explored.

Comparing the conflicting hermeneutic of the

environmentalists to that of the industrialists could test

the arguments of the model.

Besides enhancing the applicability of the model by

additional case studies, its theoretical foundation could be

expanded by integrating the contributions of other scholars.

The proposed model, as stated above, draws primarily from

Gadamer and Habermas. Other theoretical perspectives could

strengthen the validity of the model.

For instance, Gadamer and Habermas recognize the

significance of the individual as an autonomous being, but

this is not solely a twentieth century perspective. The

Humanist tradition of the sixteenth century seemingly

advocated parallel ideas. The fundamental "reason for

Humanist activity was a passionate concern with the human

condition, a passionate dedication to the improvement of

human life and to the emancipation of human life." 8 A

85

broader appreciation and relevance for Humanism may be

possible by reconciling that tradition with the one posed by

the model.

The results from these studies may eventually instill

within the individual that s/he can become a more authentic

societal member. By questioning the ideologies and the

authority of those hermeneutics, individuals may come closer

to the original fact. In doing so, s/he may achieve the

high status of a critical thinker. An individual's

dependence on his/her own rationale expands participation,

rather than subservience to the dictates of an ideology that

stifles participation.

This chapter has argued that for society to ethically

exist the inherent power structure of the hermeneutic must

be questioned. Challenging the hermeneutic with legitimate

discourse--rhetoric as praxis--individuals and society may

cast aside the dominating yoke of tradition, thus leading to

a more humane society of true participants.

This chapter also has suggested areas of research that

may test and strengthen the application of this model. The

results of these investigations may uncover recurring

imperfections of hermeneutical discourse. These

observations may facilitate a better understanding of

hermeneutic constructions. Through continuing research of

this nature, ethical and legitimate discourse may become

more apparent to societal members.

NOTES

George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece,

(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1963) 13-14; Ralph

A. Hamlett, "The Rhetoric of Synnationalism: A Model of

Foreign Policy Discourse," (Diss. LSU, 1992) 170.

2 John O'Neil, "Critique and Remembrance," On

Critical Theory, ed. John O'Neil, (New York: Seabury

Press, 1976) 8.

3 Dieter Misgeld, "Critical Theory and Hermeneutics:

The Debate Between Habermas and Gadamer," On Critical

Theory, trans. John O'Neil, (New York: Seabury Press,

1976) 168.

4 Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas

McCarthy, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) 19.

5 Habermas, Legitimation 71.

6 Thomas Moore, Utopia, trans. Peter K. Marshall,

(New York: Washington Square Press, 1965) viii.

86

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