Eristics in Mediatized Political Rhetoric

Abstract

Eristics (from the Greek eristikos, which means dispute) assumes itself as the art of controversy that would allow the absurd or the false to triumph. It is a communicative practice that aims at disputing the adversary theses and deconstructing them in order, not to the truth, but to victory.

In this article, I affirm the contemporary presence of eristics and underline two fundamental ideas: 1) eristics is a rhetorical component, differentiated from the persuasive modality; 2) eristics should be appreciated, not only according to its classical heritage, but also from the point of view of modern technological devices of symbolic mediation.

I propose to reassess the place of eristics in rhetoric. I argue that, in today's mediatized societies, we are witnessing a resurgence of eristic rhetoric, even in the deliberative genre and within social fields where one would expect argumentative rationality to prevail. I will begin by introducing eristics, as it emerged in the classical period to, in a second moment, characterize its structure by giving contemporary examples. Finally, I will demonstrate that the media are, nowadays, stages of eristic exercise and I will exemplify how televised political debate is impregnated with a rhetorical discourse that is highly aggressive, contentious, and based on an intense logic of antagonism that extends from politics to sports