Rhetoric in a time of Pandemic

We live in strange times, not so much the new normal, but a new abnormal. A time where the normal has been suspended, displaced, thrown aside to expose a deeper level or constellation of human life. It is ‘a time of exception’, a time that Continental philosophers call ‘an event’. These are times when the normal flow, conventions, routines and habits of social life are brutally suspended, dissolved or overturned. It is as if we are living through an experiment, something unprecedented, an experiment in a special laboratory sealed off from normal social life.

I am interested in two questions:

1. can rhetoric can throw any useful light on social & political life during this time of exception?
2. can the social and political life during this pandemic throw any useful light on rhetoric?

I proceed in four steps:

• Athens: First, I sketch the Athenian world in which rhetoric and philosophy competed with each other
• Modernity: Secondly, I outline the Modernist framework that we unselfconsciously draw on when encountering another socio-political world
• Pandemic: Third, I explore the competing voices of rhetoric and science during this pandemic
• Trump: Finally, I picture Trump as a would-be Sophist rhetor

Click to access eltham-paper-rhetoric-2020.pdf