Chaim Perelman and Memoria

I’ve always been interested in how theorists use memory as a rhetorical tool from which to generate thought in their works.

The following is an example from Chaim Perelman’s “The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning”:

“The last two years of secondary education in Belgium used to be called traditionally ‘Poetry’ and ‘Rhetoric.’ I still remember that, over forty years ago, I had to study the ‘Elements of Rhetoric’ for a final high-school examination, and I learned more or less by the contents of a small manual, the first part of which concerned the syllogism and the second the figures of style. Later, in the university, I took a course of logic which covered, among other things, the analysis of the syllogism. I then learned that logic is a formal discipline that studies the structure of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Since then I have often wondered what a link a professor of rhetoric could possibly discover between the syllogism and the figures of style with their exotic names that are so difficult to remember”( 57).

Perelman uses memory as means to generate a discussion about our favorite topic: the good ‘ol tension between rhetoric and philosophy. Actually, this is the first paragraph from the excerpt of “The New Rhetoric,” which remains seminal in its aim to redefine rhetoric as a theory of argumentation that aims to center the role and function of audience.

I keep wondering why Perelman believes that the “exotic names” of the figures of style are “so difficult to remember” considering that their strangeness would make them even more memorable, right? I’m also intrigued by how this remembrance is linked to other excerpts by other theorists who recall their formal education and the methods by which they learned something, whether it be writing, language, logic, poetry or rhetoric.

What exactly about our formal education stays with us through the act of remembrance? How do we articulate this educational training and how is it relative to our training in theory and our work in theorizing?

Hmm….I like these questions. More later…

Hasta la proxima.

Currently listening to...

Coldplay, "XY" ("Talk" is the best song in the world! Eat your heart out U2!)