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Article Excerpt
EVER SINCE THE commercial airline missiles destroyed New York City's World Trade Center on 9/11/01, images of violence and catastrophe have seared the collective mind. A popular image shot by freelance photographer Mark Phillips seemed to capture the face of a demon in a large plume of smoke emanating from one of the twin towers (see fig. 1). Soon after the Associated Press secured one-time printing rights to the so-called "smoke demon" image, it became available to Internet users who quickly disseminated it with foreboding commentary about the Christian apocalypse. For many evangelical Protestants in particular, the smoke demon provided evidence that the "current seat of Satan's power" resides in American financial institutions, and that the demise of the World Trade Center is a sign from God (or the Devil) that the end-time is near (Mikkelson & Mikkelson). The goal of this essay is to show how speech writers used a similar, demonic anthropomorphism to craft a righteous presidential rhetoric that helped overcome the widespread experience of anomie and speechlessness caused by the violence of 9/11.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
To this end the essay proceeds in four parts. Part one provides a context for the study by describing the recent increase of demonic rhetoric in popular culture. Part two locates the demonic in relation to the religious genres of exorcism and conversion, two iterations of the larger cultural form of religious transformation. In part three, I examine the parallels between exorcism and the political purging of figurative bodies, specifically those that appear in the speeches of George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. Finally, the essay concludes with a discussion of the implications of such a reading for rhetorical theory and practice, focusing particularly on the continued relevance of genre to the study of political discourse.
Demons and Possession in Popular Culture
The Demonic Default
Similar to the childhood game of seeing animals in clouds or finding "the face of Mother Theresa in a cinnamon bun," the attribution of form, particularly a human-like form, to an otherwise vague and diffuse stimulus is an perceptual illusion termed "pareidolia" (Carroll 2002). According to the anthropologist Stewart Guthrie, pareidolic anthropomorphisms, such as the smoke demon, frequently concern religious figures, for the attribution of form to the ineffable in general is the psychological basis of religion (also see Cassirer). (1) Guthrie also claims that religious anthropomorphisms tend to attribute a given deity or supernatural figure with the power of speech (198). Gods and demons speak, and they often have the power to mute speech. From an evangelical perspective, for example, one could claim that Satan's destructive power on 9/11 momentarily robbed the U.S. citizenry of its voice, its power to name, and thereby its ability to comprehend and cope; with destruction and death, Satan silences.
The ineffability of 9/11 has created numerous rhetorical acts designed to restore the voice and security of the polity, including a litany of rituals, speeches, and performances mourning the loss of the dead, commemorating rescue efforts, and celebrating communal bonds. Speakers who sought to assuage audiences by amplifying the virtues of the American people repeatedly used the words courage, honor, freedom, trust, and faith. In other words, the Western terminological repertoire for expressing goodness, secular and divine, is large. Those who sought to characterize the "terrorists" or their deeds, however, were limited in their expression. They described the terrorists' intent and motives as "evil," reducing human action to inhuman motion and thereby dehumanizing the racial/religious Other as monsters controlled by a malevolent force.
The rhetorical invention of evil is difficult because Westerners have a limited repertoire of language for characterizing it. Historically, of course, the demonic personifications of religious discourse have provided the bulk of Western representations of evil (see Russell The Devil; Delbanco). (2) Jeffrey Burton Russell, an expert on the study of the problem of evil, suggests that the paucity of terms for characterizing evil is related to the ineffability of evil itself, defined as "the abuse of a sentient [or pain conscious] being" (Russell, Devil 17). Russell argues that evil "is never abstract" because an identifiable victim always exists. In most cultures, argues Russell, "evil is felt as a purposeful force ... [and is] personified" (Russell, The Devil 17; also see Russell, Satan; Russell, Lucifer; and Russell, Mephistopheles). The ineffability of evil, the speechlessness caused by human suffering, demands an identifiable purpose or cause (also see O'Leary 3-19; 34-44). In light of Guthrie's anthropomorphic thesis, it makes sense that demons and monsters represent, literally and figuratively, the purpose or forces behind needless suffering in the popular imagination; demons are ready-made cultural signifiers, handy topoi for restoring speech.
Edward J. Ingebretsen claims that demons and monsters are handy signifiers because their creation and destruction is a "soul-deep" narrative form in U.S. popular culture. Monster-making is a uniquely American "pedagogy of fear" that justifies otherwise unacceptable violence by de-humanizing and demonizing the Other (19-41). Declaring something or someone as evil or possessed by evil (a monster) is part of an American political fantasy that establishes or prioritizes certain beliefs, attitudes, and values in relation to some governing norm and through the destruction of the "abnormal" (Ingebretsen 3). (3) The Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, hate crimes and riots, murder mysteries and slasher horror films, are examples. Ingebretsen suggests that the success and persistence of the demonic and monstrous relate to the pleasures of repetition, the erotics of frustration and satiation, as the stories of the creation and destruction of a monster or demon surface repeatedly in different guises. Of course, the rhetorical concept for Ingebretsen's "narrative formula," for the recognition and pleasure of a repetitious narrative form, is that of genre (see Burke, Counter-statement, 29-44). In the following sections I suggest that exorcism, understood as a violent, ritual cleansing of a body, has reemerged as a significant generic form of demon-making in three interrelated domains: the mass media; the ritual practice of Catholics and Protestants; and presidential speech craft.
Millennialism and Demonic Possession
Sociologist Michael W. Cuneo argues that the greatest popular interest in exorcism to date emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century as a consequence of its representation by the entertainment industry. "Exorcism became a raging concern in the United States," says Cuneo, "only when the popular entertainment industry jacked up the heat. Only with the release of [the film] The Exorcist and the publication of [the book] Hostage to the Devil ... did fears of demonization become widespread" (272). The recent, popular interest in exorcism also suggests a millennial stimulus in the form of Satanic thrillers, such as End of Days and Polanski's The Ninth Gate, and possession thrillers, such as MGM's Stigmata, Warner Brother's re-release of The Exorcist, Paramount's Bless the Child, and New Line Studio's Lost Souls. Showtime produced a widely-watched film, Possessed, based on the "real life" story that inspired The Exorcist. Numerous books about demonic possession have also recently appeared, from Cuneo's paperback reprint American Exorcism, to less secular how-to's such as Bob Larson's In the Name of Satan: How the Forces of Evil Work and What You Can Do to Defeat Them, and Doris M. Wagner's How to Cast Out Demons: A Guide to the Basics. Just prior to the attacks on 9/11, these films and books defused demonic images and themes into popular news articles and television programs.
Although the public's preoccupation with the rhetoric of evil in popular discourse indicates a continued fascination with the demonic, (4) critics have given little attention to ritual exorcism as a generic form or as a rhetorical means for naming the ineffable in order to cope with social realities. (5) If The Exorcist film represents disturbances in "American consciousness" as Thomas Frentz and Thomas Farrell suggest (40-47), then recent media interest in the demonic marks the resurgence of a latent theological form deserving more attention. I suspect that scholars do not discuss exorcism as a rhetorical form because the rite is less obvious than forms such as the American monomyth (e.g., the singular plot of a selfless hero fighting evil; see Brookey and Westerfelhaus). More important, I think that the scholarly blindness to supernatural cultural forms is related to a tacit agnosticism in political and rhetorical scholarship. David S. Gutterman argues that many contemporary political scholars ignore the theological and regard less moderate religious groups--particularly the "Bible-believing" Christians--as a "problem public" with extreme beliefs and social activities. Further, although a number of rhetorical scholars identity the interrelationship between religion and politics, this work usually focuses on the historical past (see Darsey 175-198 for one notable exception). Scholars of political rhetoric sometimes ignore the profound interconnections among religion, spirituality, and contemporary political discourse. "Scholars of politics in the United States--and political theorists in particular," argues Gutterman, "can continue to ignore Bible-believing Christians and the pervasive relation between religion and politics at their own risk" (par. 2). The religious themes of conversion and transformation in Bush's campaign manifesto, A Charge to Keep, make a strong case for not taking the risk.
Toward a Generic Revivalism
Genre as the Verbal Character of Unconscious Forms
The unfashionability of generic criticism may also be a reason for the lack of attention given to religious forms in recent years. The poststructuralist turn, in particular, has encouraged moving away from genres and similar "modern" conceits in favor of genealogical and cartographic modes of criticism (Callinicos...
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