Erving Goffman’s presidential address on ‘The interaction order’: Rhetorical combat and the display of vocational commitment

Erving Goffman’s posthumously published essay, ‘The interaction order’, which was to have been presented as a presidential address at an annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, is usually taken to be an attempt at a systematic summary by Goffman of his key ideas. This article suggests the address can also be understood as a profoundly personal and deeply scornful critique by Goffman of the varieties of mainstream sociology and the pretensions of its practitioners. Incorporated into that critique is a simulacrum in which Goffman demonstrated what a systematic treatment of his work might look like had he actually been inclined to generate one. In that respect, ‘The interaction order’ transcends the boundaries of what we ordinarily expect to find in an academic address: it is simultaneously an artful display of Goffman’s real vocational commitment to sociology, a contribution to the rhetorical debate in which he engaged with the practitioners of orthodox versions of sociology and a brief but significant demonstration of some aspects he considered distinctive about his own form of sociology.

The negotiation of distance or the embodiment of the interpersonal

Chapter 11 analyzes how all the preceding elements of the new definition of rhetoric as the negotiation of distance fit together. What is meant by negotiation? People can, and do, maintain, increase, or diminish the distance between themselves on a daily basis. After the preceding accounts of logos, ethos, and pathos, this final chapter is devoted to the analysis of distance. It analyzes how rhetoric affects the variations in distance between individuals, and how the variations of distance in turn affect the rhetorical impact sought by the interlocutors. This is where the distinction between the projective view that one has of others plays just as much of a role as the effective situation of others. The discrepancy between the projective and the effective can make distance itself an object of rhetorical debate.

Machiavelli and the relativism of value criticism

Machiavelli’s reception is deeply divided. He has been both criticized as the evil executioner of state interests and celebrated as the representative of genuine Republicanism, the only person with an efficient and humane answer to challenges of historical determinism. These readings would suggest that his work belongs to the area of political philosophy, yet his philosophy cannot be surveyed without considering general aspects of value and the metaphysics of history. Machiavelli critiques the idea of objective value without a historical context: he basically maintains that the ontology of values is historical and that history has ontological relevance. He practically starts out with a project in ideology criticism, and this lays the foundation of his model of the historical event as a rhetorical space in which virtue (virtừ) manifests itself. His model of the historical event not only discredits any given theory of value but also projects a possibility of agency and innovation in history against historical determinism. In his model historical contents appear as elements of a rhetorical debate for keeping or acquiring power. Of course, throughout his work there is always a danger for regressing into an ahistorical model or axiology of history. The paper claims that the accusation of “Machiavellian immorality” cannot be validated according to its vulgar sense but is rather the characteristic of a moral criticism that would like to secure the preconditions of history. The paper reads The Prince not as a reference letter to monarchic power but rather as a systematization of history. It is not a series of loosely linked historical event and anecdotes but a rhetorical analysis of the formal structures of history. In this sense, The Prince can be compared to Nietzsche’s debated ideas on value and history.

Beyond “Eurocentrism”?

This paper deals with the recurrent criticism in Translation studies in general and Anglophone Translation studies in particular that the discipline labors under a ‘Eurocentric’ bias. The author develops two arguments in relation to this. First, the charge of ‘Eurocentrism’ serves a number ends that have less to do with an actual desire to reach out to ‘non-Western’ discourses on translation (although the globalization of the discipline has definitely broadened the scope and concerns of translation scholars) than with a generation gap among translation scholars. Drawing on literature from the last two decades, the author argues that ‘Eurocentrism’ often functions as an asymmetrical counterconcept, in Reinhardt Koselleck’s sense, which allows translation scholars to legitimize their scholarly project by investing it with a sense of urgency and political relevance. In a second step, the author argues that the rhetorical debate over ‘Eurocentrism’ often suffers from an overextension of identity claims, whereby translation processes are reduced to either an imposition of or reaction against hegemonic power structures. This focus on identity, however legitimate, may result in linguistic paternalism. To counteract this negative effect, the author calls for a revalorization of instrumentalist justifications of language use by drawing on linguistic justice theory, arguing that, following recent insights by political philosophers and contrary to the prevalent view held by translation scholars, when it comes to determining a just translation policy, (non-linguistic) instrumental concerns tend to override (intrinsic) identity concerns.