Republican Rhetoric of the Polis, and Litige
[Note: A version of this argument appears in my dissertation and on this website where I deal with Ironic Satire, and Satiric Irony.]
Jean-François Lyotard talks about rhetoric’s republican roots–as coming from the citizens in the Republic, living within the city walls (or polis; as opposed to the pagans–inhabitants of the pagus outside of it). This republican system presupposes that dispute resolution will take place via litigation or litige (“Lessons”).
Maurice Charland describes litige as “a dispute where both parties articulate their claims in a language they mutually share with a court or judge whose legitimacy they both recognize,” in which “the decorum of the court is known and respected by both parties, and the judgment imposes closure” (221-22). This description thus requires shared language, shared notions of decorum, a shared estimation of and respect for authority.
Because of litige, we infer a lot whenever we talk (or listen), including when we tell (or hear) jokes. Generally, we think that everyone communicates like we do, and therefore, everyone knows exactly what a person means when they say something, either because of the words they’ve chosen or the way they say it–we know how they’re supposed to act, the decorum, and how we’re supposed to respond, and therefore we think we can all judge the way they did act. These judgments close a discourse–they fix its meaning to “what it really means. In terms of jokes, we get it, and it only means one thing (or perhaps a couple of/few things).
If only it were that simple.
The Pagus
As I mentioned, for Lyotard, there is an alternative to the city (or polis) with it’s rules (litige). Lyotard calls the godless, open space or nomos outside the city walls the pagus, (“Lessons”). We might label the pagus, following from Deleuze and Guattari, a smooth space in contrast to striated, highly delineated space of the polis (McKerrow). These are the wild areas, peopled with unknown elements. In this space, there are no pre-set groups, no enduring logics or rules, only spaces of interaction and friction among ad hoc and ephemeral individuals and groups. I argue that this is the space comedians occupy. They are pagans.
References:
Charland, Maurice. “Property and Propriety: Rhetoric, Justice, and Lyotard’s Différend.” Judgment Calls: Rhetoric, Politics, and Indeterminancy. Ed. John M. Sloop and James P. McDaniel. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998. 220-36.
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum, 1980/1987.
Lyotard, Jean François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1984/2002.
—. The Différend. Trans. George Van Den Abeele. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1988.
—. “Lessons in Paganism.” The Lyotard Reader. Ed. Andrew Benjamin. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989/1993. 122-154.
McKerrow, Raymie E. “Space and time in the postmodern polity,” Western Journal of Communication 63:3 (1999): 271-290,
Wilson, Nathan. Was That Supposed to be Funny? A Rhetorical Analysis of Politics, Problems and Contradictions in Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy. Dissertation in partial completion of the Ph.D. August, 2008.
