Retórica, derecho y política. Acerca de algunos retoremas franceses

Abstract

Rhetoric is not a universal but only appears to be, or is made to appear so. Its appearance of universality is both a result of its unique foundation, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which sets it apart from other political disciplines, and of its immemorial usage (by contrast self-professed political science is a recent thing). One way not to remain transfixed by its discursive categories and to take measure the uses of rhetoric, and to inscribe it in historical conditions is, for instance, to try and understand why in France rhetoric developed a complex relation with democratic republicanism. This essay deals first with an archaeology of rhetoric’s annulation and incomprehensibility; with key moments of a hygienic distance taken by democracy toward rhetoric. And it then proceeds to elucidate what I call “rhetoremes”, that is how this anti-rhetorical cure has produced technologies of domination taking three cases: management, social dialogue, promises.