The Ethics of Rhetoric is the Rhetoric of Ethics Refusing the Call to Codification
Main Article Content
Abstract
Recent calls for a statement of ethics for RHM research claim that a statement is needed in order to have a “place at the table” for collaborative medical research. I argue two problems exist with this call. First, the motive for creating a statement reflects criticism of rhetoric’s epistemic and ethical virtues raised by Dilip Gaonkar and Plato, respectively. Second, ethics statements do not adequately address the range of research practices found in transdisciplines like RHM. Drawing from RHM scholarship and my own experiences, I argue that these criticisms are unfounded and that RHM’s ethical value is found in our analysis and criticism.
Article Details
References
References
Baldwinson, Raquel. (2018). Ethics for rhetoric, the rhetoric of ethics, and rhetorical ethics in health and medicine. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1(3-4), 213-238.
Barton, Ellen. (2017, Sept. 15). Ambitions, audience, access, anxieties, analysis: Impact. Paper presented at the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine Symposium, Cincinnati, OH.
Bennett, Jeffrey A. (2009). Banning queer blood: Rhetorics of citizenship, contagion, and resistance. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Ceccarelli, Leah. (2001). Shaping science with rhetoric: The cases of Dobzhansky, Schrödinger, and Wilson. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Dubriwny, Tasha N. (2013). The vulnerable empowered woman: Feminism, postfeminism, and women's health. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar. (1997). The idea of rhetoric in the rhetoric of science. In Alan G. Gross & William M. Keith (Eds.), Rhetorical hermeneutics: Invention and interpretation in the age of science (pp. 25-88). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Garrett, Jeremy R. (2019). It's the idiom, stupid: A plea for formal rhetorical analysis in bioethics. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(1), 67-69.
Garrison, Nanibaa’ A., Brothers, Kyle B., Goldenberg, Aaron J., & Lynch, John A. (2019). Genomic contextualism: SHifting the rhetoric of genetic exceptionalism. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(1), 51-63.
Graham, S. Scott. (2015). The politics of pain medicine: A rhetorical-ontological inquiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gross, Alan G., & Keith, William M. (Eds.). (1997). Rhetorical hermeneutics: Invention and interpretation in the age of science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Johnson, Jenell. (2014). American lobotomy: A rhetorical history. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Johnson, Jenell. (2016). Bioethics as a way of life: The radical bioethics of Van Rensselaer Potter. Literature & Medicine, 34(1), 7-24.
Johnson, Meredith A., & Johnson, Nathan R. (2018). Can objects be moral agents? Posthuman praxis in public transportation. In K. Moore & D. Richards (Eds.), Posthuman praxis in technical communication (pp. 123-142). London, UK: Routledge.
Keränen, Lisa (2010). Scientific characters: Rhetoric, politics, and truth in breast cancer research. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Lynch, John A. (2019). Bioethics and Brave New World: Science fiction and public articulation of bioethics. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(1), 33-59.
McKinnon, Sara L., Asen, Robert, Chávez, Karma R., & Howard, Robert Glenn. (Eds.). (2016). Text+Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
McKinnon, Sara L., Johnson, Jenell, Asen, Robert, Chávez, Karma R., & Howard, Robert Glenn (2016). Rhetoric and ethics revisited: What happens when rhetorical scholars go into the field. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(6), 560-570.
Mulkay, Michael. (1996). Frankenstein and the debate over embryo research. Science, Technology and Human Values, 21(2), 157-176.
Nelson, John S., Megill, Allan, & McCloskey, Dierdre N. (Eds.). (1987). The rhetoric of the human sciences: Language and argument in scholarship and public affairs.
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Plato. (1994). Gorgias (R. Waterfield, Trans.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Simons, Herbert W. (Ed.) (1990). The rhetorical turn: Invention and persuasion in the conduct of inquiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Von Burg, Ron. (2010). Cinematic Genetics: GATTACA, Essentially Yours, and the Rhetoric of Genetic Determinism. Southern Communication Journal, 75(1), 1-16.