ABSTRACT
Historically, rhetoric served as the means for developing public knowledge by which communities organized social relationships. Rhetoric was the means by which uncertain and murky questions were resolved, permitting establishment of law and the protection of citizenry.
Today, however, rhetoric is being commandeered to create confusion, misunderstanding, fear and doubt. Rather than rhetoric-as-a-way-of-knowing, it is becoming a-way-of-creating-ignorance, not knowledge.
This chapter provides a new search model for you to use to analyze and evaluate discourses that you suspect are intended to manipulate audience understanding in ways that are harmful to the audience. Drawing on theory drawn from agnotology, this chapter first examines common social functions of ignorance as a context for rhetorical applications.
Next, it offers a comprehensive model for analysis beginning with treatment of conditions for shared knowledge, comparing the ideal and actual conditions that exist. This acts like “reservations” of a claim that facilitate reasoned critiques of rhetoric-in-action. From that a detailed catalog of rhetorical strategies of the rhetoric of ignorance is presented: games and strategies; occasions and settings and roles; identities and scripts. The last element of the search model is a comprehensive compendium of rhetorical devices for creating ignorance.
The model is applied to Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations Security Council making the case that Iraqi had weapons of mass destruction, setting the stage for the unprovoked attack on Iraqis by the United States. It is a profound example of the rhetoric of ignorance and its consequences.
