The book The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi and Miles Smit illustrates a step-by-step strategy to effectively debunk an opponent’s argument; the authors take a homorhetoricus route towards deception and view truth as a construction. As Stanley Fish illustrates in “Rhetoric,” ‘low,’ persuasive language is extremely potent and easily influences mankind due to our general weakness for eloquence and inclination towards spectacle. The Art of Deception encourages their readers to play off of man’s desire for titillation and drama while strategically constructing ‘truth’ in order to win arguments. The effects of winning an argument with some of the book’s suggestions, however, are detrimental; the symbolic action of a militant posture during a debate, if taken to its terminological endpoint, is dangerously close to the violence that language attempts to avoid. A similar violent action are the consequences of the book’s encouragement to reproduce the trope of ideal masculinity in order to appear confident in one’s argumentation; the effects of this are that traditionally stigmatized and marginalized voices are repressed and the white, masculinist, logocentric, elitist hierarchy is left intact.
The book begins with an orientation towards Aristotle’s teachings, that only those who understand the perils of language through enthymemes, syllogisms and other rhetorical devices can master the deceptive arts and resist the seductive power of words to form their own discovery of truth (Aristotle 118-9). The authors argue that anyone who wants to learn “active manipulation” will be able to unmask illogical arguments if they gain mastery of language (Capaldi and Smit 8-9). To this end they claim that all arguments have terministic screens, which as Kenneth Burke would argue, direct the attention and intention (115). For example, when they discuss Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis, the authors argue that all of the ‘isms’ that we as a society take to be truths are observable and cannot be proved false or true (82). Kenneth Burke complements this premise by noting that “even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (115). This being said, Capaldi and Smit want their readers to use this information to their benefit, challenging rhetoricians to beguile by following these logics that “infect the popular mind” or by unraveling the enthymemes that are inherent in these theories (84).
Burke differs from Capaldi and Smit in that he views commonplaces as something similar to the way that the Nazis used unification as a sort of cure; the creation of a fictitious devil is a symbolic action, a way to congregate by segregation, a purification by way of sacrifice (Burke 229). The authors of The Art of Deception ignore the potentially violent effects of this style of argumentation and encourage rhetoricians to reduplicate this perfected curative function in order to win arguments (230). For example, Capaldi and Smit persuade their audience that by scapegoating one’s opponent, one can exploit the audiences’ sympathies, make the opposition look stupid and, “save [one]self the trouble of having to deal logically with [their] arguments” (117). Burke would argue that this posture, of slaying one’s opponent without considering his or her logic, is a violent symbolic action. This total action is reminiscent of the violent “total action” committed on Christ, the ultimate sacrifice committed by humanity (Burke 157). By Capaldi and Smit’s perfected tactics, a rhetorician could symbolically kill a peaceful opponent without regarding their actual message, thereby hypnotizing an audience and perfecting the victory and sacrifice (Burke 153). The problem with theatrically debunking the audience’s trust in your opponent as a rational person is that unification is a very dangerous term; by killing an opponent, we do not have to hear his argument or consider his position, an orientation frighteningly similar to that of the Nazis or the murderers of Christ (Capaldi and Smit 184).
Burke argues that “Dramatism is always on the edge of this vexing problem, that comes to a culmination in tragedy, the song of the scapegoat” (125) and that “man clings to a kind of naïve verbal realism that refuses to let him realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality” (118). The Art of Deception similarly does not seek other avenues of rhetorical victory or stasis; rather, the authors encourage the use of ridicule and place value on the symbolic rhetorical warrior without noting their harmful complicity in the violence that Burke warns against. For example, the authors state that winning rhetoricians should always hint that the opposition has either misstated their case because their opponent is either too daft to understand the argument’s complexity or because of deceitful misrepresentation (Capaldi and Smit 163). This posits a hierarchy that metaphorically places the winning rhetorician as the omnipotent, all-seeing, truthful God and the rhetorician’s opponent as the villainous, treacherous Devil.
The injurious effects this causes is not readily apparent on the surface; the assumed dialectical relationship of “God” and “Devil” are explicitly stated in The Art of Deception; the quickest path to self-confidence and victory is to truly believe your opponent is “evil” and “dishonest and unscrupulous in intent” (162). If this metaphor is taken to its terminological endpoint, violence, either symbolic or physical is certain. Likewise, when the book tells rhetoricians to trick their audiences into believing their opponent is a “scoundrel” or a “liar” by suppressing statistics that would be obstructive to their case, the rhetorician is positioning his or herself in a situation of being able to see through the opponent’s smokescreen, another clandestine tropological trick asserting hierarchy and laying claim to an outside untainted reality (132). A similar strategic metaphor that Capaldi and Smit suggest rhetoricians use is when discussing fallacies; they state that the audience will believe an opponent is guilty of lying and by default, an immoral person, by the rhetorician exposing fallacies by their Latin names, which sound like infectious diseases (143). By hinting that one’s opponent is contagious and poisonous, the audience is being led to a perfected God terminology, where the rhetorician is the cure and the opponent is the contaminant, the opponent needing to be quickly quarantined, silenced and figuratively killed. The authors further encourage rhetoricians to invite their opponent to unite under a common search for truth, giving the dangerous illusion, dialectically, that the opponent is the Devil, an artful deceiver who needs to work on their integrity, and that the rhetorican is able to access a space of unspun truth, guiding and leading the audience onto higher moral grounds and out of the perilous paths of deception (188).
Another deeply troubling metaphor in The Art of Deception is the aggressive stance and warlike imagery the book dangerously couples with the quest for truth (a ‘truth’ that is clearly manufactured for the performative act of rhetoric). “Under no circumstances should you admit defeat” is one of Capaldi and Smit’s suggestions for rhetorical posture (186) as well as using certain strategies like using ridicule as a weapon, (125) presenting “subtle threats” under the guise of “prediction” (185) and “finishing [the opponent] off” (183) in the hopes of “victory” (186). The problem with Capaldi and Smit’s vocabulary here is similar to the forced and dramatic inculcation of the audience into the allegorical depiction of God and Devil. As Richard Rorty would point out in “The Contingency of Language,” the language games that these authors encourage the rhetorician to play are contingent on tradition and are reductionist, which inhibit the audience as truth-seekers from attempting to evolve as an intellectual species by shaping new metaphors (71-82).
The metaphor of God and Devil, and victor and victim can be extended to man and other; specifically, when The Art of Deception discusses symbolic rhetorical posture, they discuss it in terms of traditionally masculine behaviors. For example, when under attack, Capaldi and Smit advocate learning to control one’s emotions. They further recommend sitting confidently without squirming with folded hands and apathetically appearing to ignore the opponent’s argument, all while retaining the air that the rhetorician is in control of the argument (161-3). Though it is not explicit, these behaviors are stoic, and detached, reminiscent of a masculine cultural hero like Indiana Jones or John Wayne. The idea of never admitting defeat is akin to never admitting when you need help or directions, symbolically and traditionally masculine behaviors. The problem with the authors promoting this timeworn ‘macho man’ gender performance is that it reproduces effects that rely on existing vocabularies. This is problematic because as Richard Graff and Michael Leff point out in “Revisionist Historiography and Rhetorical Traditions,” the grand narrative of rhetoric traditionally was unaware of its tendency to covertly marginalize certain discourses and place them in an outer constellation where elite traditions were favored (21-3). Judith Butler argues in “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” that if these old metaphors are being reproduced and imitated compulsively, they are normative measures of the real, placing priority on idealized masculine behaviors and intimating that the ‘other’ is a bad copy or imitation, something inauthentic and therefore lower on the hierarchy (124-129). Burke would argue that this hierarchy and order is something rhetoricians who desire to understand the depth of the problem of language should avoid in order to circumvent the tendency towards scapegoating, sacrifice, purification and the perfected terminologies that lead to violence (118).
In conclusion, The Art of Deception places great emphasis on the covert use of terministic screens and tropes that have been inherited and unchallenged; Capaldi and Smit unabashedly encourage their readers to reproduce these behaviors, the effects of which keep man locked into the “symbols-using animal” role that “clings to a kind of naïve verbal realism that refuses to let him realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality (Burke 118). Because our notions of truth are contingent upon language, we must be constantly aware of our complicity in symbolic acts and language games that suppress and repress (Rorty 69). By reduplicating and reemphasizing the language that has been interpreted for us, we remain trapped in the dialectic. We must seek other avenues towards truth that somehow defy our normative interpretations of reality, that include all types of discourse, and that defy the segregation which figuratively and symbolically murders.
