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Article Excerpt
Governor George Ryan served most of his 35 years in Illinois state politics as a firm believer in the death penalty and the criminal justice system that enforced it. However, after 2 years in the gubernatorial office, he changed his views dramatically, and on January 11, 2003, with just 2 days left in his term as governor, he commuted all Illinois death sentences to prison terms of life or less, by far the largest state clearing of death row in history (Wilgoren, 2003b). [1] Ryan's critics, and he had many, viewed the commutation as an effort to divert attention from a corruption scandal that evolved during his term of office and eventually brought his political career to an end. Curiously, Ryan imposed the moratorium on executions on January 31, 2000, shortly after Dean Bauer, his former inspector general in the secretary of state's office, was indicted for covering up politically sensitive investigations. [2] While the corruption scandal overshadowed Ryan's term as governor, his rhetorical conversion against the death penalty in general and his announcement of commuting death row sentences in particular can be viewed symbolically both as a mortification of capital punishment, the denial or negation of that which he once condoned and practiced, and as an act of factional scapegoating that shifted blame to the criminal justice system.
This essay examines Illinois Governor Ryan's discourse on his death penalty moratorium and commutation of death sentences, with specific focus on his statement in the 2002 Report on the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment and his commutation announcement on January 11, 2003. These two addresses are considered to be key symbolic acts of mortification and factional scapegoating in which Ryan denied (negated) the practice of capital punishment in the justice system by first denying or negating the practice of it himself. In Kenneth Burke's theory of dramatism, mortification is a symbolic attempt to purify or atone for pollution or guilt through confession or self-sacrifice for the sake of forgiveness. Accordingly, Ryan first admitted that he supported capital punishment throughout most of his life and political career but then worked for redemption. Punishing the inner victim in this way allowed Ryan to negate or slay the act of capital punishment within himself. After doing so, he then confronted the outer or social victim in the legal justice system that served as the source of injustice and disorder. It is through this process, whereby Ryan first acted inwardly to discipline a self that threatened order within the self and then to discipline and reject the collective form of punishment that threatened order within society as a whole, that Ryan combined mortification and scapegoating to confront the death penalty and the judicial system that carries it out.
In addition to viewing the scapegoat process as a shift or transference of blame to others in general, Burke (1984a) also discussed the possibility of two more specific types of scapegoating, the universal and the factional (pp. 188-189). On the one hand, an act of universal scapegoating is essentially associative, although it also includes dissociation. That is, audiences identify with and pity the victim, because the victim includes everyone. However, they do not identify with the victim's punishment, because it produces terror. On the other hand, factional scapegoating only creates dissociation, for it blames some, not all. Factional scapegoating divides individuals into camps. Also, if an act of mortification accompanies scapegoating, the scapegoating would typically be universal in nature, as in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in which Christ willingly died on the cross while taking on the sins or burdens of all. This is an example of victimage that includes both mortification and universal scapegoating, since it combines self-sacrifice with a sacrifice for everyone. Though examples of victimage that include mortification and universal scapegoating are relatively rare, cases of mortification and factional scapegoating are even more so. For example, in previous research on victimage, mortification as a self-willed sacrifice does not accompany factional scapegoating. [3]
However, this essay argues that Ryan's factional scapegoating of the justice system with regard to capital punishment merged with an ideal form of mortification that is self-willed and self-imposed. After slaying the appetite for capital punishment within himself, he then pointed the finger of guilt at the justice system for not doing the same. Therefore, this analysis advances the theoretical and critical understanding of rhetorical victimage by demonstrating how an act of mortification also combined with factional scapegoating in a program of action to end capital punishment. Ryan's rhetoric established this program of action in a progressive form that is first directed at the self and then at the other. In this way, Ryan's mortification also prepared him for his scapegoating. Yet the rhetoric was also fluid in that Ryan continually reminded the audience of his mortification throughout the drama. As such, Ryan combined self-persecution, persecution of the other, and purgation, even though the victimage was neither universal nor complete, since it did not serve to redeem everyone.
The essay first provides a critical perspective of mortification and factional scapegoating based on dramatism, then examines the two addresses wherein Ryan explained and carried out his moratorium and commutation in light of the incongruities between the ends and means of capital punishment that gave rise to Ryan's victimage. Through his mortification and factional scapegoating, Ryan called for an end to the death penalty in the justice system by first rejecting his own participation in and support of it. In this way, Ryan's act can be summarized overall as an attempt, ironically, to slay the appetite for slaying. Such irony reflects what Burke (1984b) called, "The 'Perfection of Victimage'" (p. 286). In essence, Ryan sentenced capital punishment to capital punishment. The essay not only demonstrates how Governor Ryan's public discourse functioned as mortification and factional scapegoating but also attempts to further the understanding of such victimage as symbolic acts that can come together progressively and fluidly in an attempt to restore both individual and social order. Furthermore, as will be discussed in the essay, Ryan emphasized social disorder with the extensive use of the rhetorical question, which reinforced his own mortification and scapegoating of the legal justice system. Finally, the governor's symbolic mortification and scapegoating combined with actual mortification and scapegoating in the sense that he suppressed his own unruly appetite for the death penalty by first creating the moratorium in Illinois, then punishing the justice system with the moratorium and commuting an unparalleled number of death sentences at the end of his term of office.
The Coming Together of Mortification and Scapegoating
In viewing human society dramatistically, Burke (1952, 1970a, 1970b, 1984b) identified two specific modes of vindication that arise in response to guilt and the corresponding need for redemption. [4] On the one hand, guilt can be resolved by victimage through scapegoating, whereby the responsibility for any wrongdoing by someone or some group is transferred to another. Essentially, one relieves guilt by placing it on someone or something else. [5] On the other hand, guilt can also be resolved through mortification, described by Burke (1984b) as the "scrupulous and deliberate clamping of limitation upon the self" (p. 289). In rhetorical studies, mortification is identified typically as a form of self-sacrifice that involves, as Brummett (1981) stated, the "open confession of one's 'sins' and actual or symbolic punishment of them" (p. 256). [6] Foss (1984), for example, argued that when Chrysler offered rebates for its customers to redeem itself after the bailout by the federal government, the rebate in an actual sense "constituted a form of mortification for Chrysler, in which it engaged in self-inflicted punishment as a means of purging guilt" (p. 81). Conversely, Kruse (1981) observed that symbolic punishment is common among sports figures, who "verbalize their remorse so frequently that this can be identified as a convention of the discourse" (p. 281).
The need for forgiveness and the restoration of order reflects an awareness of transgression or wrongdoing, and as Brummett (1984) noted, "the purgation of guilt leads one to an awareness that one has sinned," such that people "are led to enlightenment through punishment" (p. 219). Mortification, in this way, follows from the tragedy of wrongdoing or transgression as an acknowledgment of sin or guilt that must be corrected by an appropriate punishment (Brummett, 1984, p. 219; Rueckert, 1982, pp. 210, 224). Specifically, the punishment is a kind of death, either actual or symbolic. Burke (1970b) stated that "'mortification' does not occur when one is merely 'frustrated' by some external interference ... the mortified must, with one aspect of himself, be saying no to another aspect of himself" (p. 190). In such cases, mortification can combine with scapegoating, as the mortified feels "the urgent incentive to be 'purified' by 'projecting' his conflict upon a scapegoat, by 'passing the buck,' by seeking a sacrificial vessel upon which he can vent, as from without, a turmoil that is actually within" (Burke, 1970b, pp. 190-191). Burke (1970b) continued to suggest that "when death is viewed 'personally,' in moralistic terms colored by conditions of governance (the moral order), it is conceived not just as a natural process but also as a kind of 'capital punishment'" (p. 209). Such would be the case, according to Burke (1970b), of a "'mortification' that goes with any scrupulous ('essential') attempt at the voluntary suppression of unruly appetites" (p. 211).
From a dramatistic perspective, then, mortification is a form of self-sacrifice for the sake of forgiveness and redemption for the mortified and of restoration of order for society, but it is also part of a process for purging guilt that combines and interacts with that of scapegoating (as forms of death, mortification is "suicidal" and scapegoating is "homicidal") (Burke, 1970b, p. 190). As such, Rueckert (1982) observed that "mortification and victimage [scapegoating] merge in...
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