One could hardly find clearer examples of antagonistic
positioning than these texts. These two texts are not only
exemplary, but the two incidents which they take up, the ban and
the book burning, or rather the way they are explicated, are the
two initial events around which this discourse of mutual
revulsion or offence has been accumulating. On February 14, 1989,
the matters are further confused, for then Ayatollah Khomeini
issues his fatwa, a religious opinion, in this case a
death sentence. This edict releases a new fervour of arguments,
as it expands the issue to a wider international political arena.
Together these three moments of history, the ban, the book
burning, and the fatwa, serve as structuring elements of
my study, displaying points of change.
It is here necessary to acknowledge an uneasiness with the term
with which this series of events has been labelled. There are
various forms: `the Salman Rushdie affair,' `The Satanic
Verses controversy,' `the Rushdie case.' I have chosen to
talk about `The Satanic Verses affair' for various
reasons. First of all, many of the connotations of the word
`affair' are to be observed operating during the debate:
business, performance, an object, concern, (an illicit) love
relationship, dispute (Webster's). Secondly, it is used
in other texts, too, although the one used the most would be `the
Rushdie affair.' Thirdly, as it is rather The Satanic
Verses than Salman Rushdie that is at issue, I expressly want
to avoid the ad hominem-kind of presuppositions often
voiced in the debating texts. It has been argued, too, that it
is not the book either that is in question and this has lead to
many conspirational theories in which larger organizational
forces are seen at work. Although the arguments are not always
specifically `about' the book, The Satanic Verses
obviously is the starting point of the on-going debate.
Therefore, by the use of the title of the novel in my title, I
want to emphasize its centrality in the debate as well as the
peculiarities of this affair.
What does the first part of the present title, `rhetoric,' stand
for? No conclusive history of this concept will be attempted
here. At least since the Greek and Roman antiquity, rhetoric has
had great political significance as the art of persuasion.
The present pejorative every-day term means perhaps most of all
magniloquence, or rather meaningless pompous show of words,
aestheticized language. There is, however, a wide current
interest in rhetoric, or in `New Rhetoric' as it is designated
by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958). One of the
more interesting features of this `recovery of rhetoric' is the
perception that the various `rhetorical devices' are vital
components of the contents of an argument.
What I am aiming for is not only or primarily to detect the
rhetorical devices or to define their argumentative content, but
also to discover how the arguments are involved in negotiating
contending views. And further, as I see it, `rhetoric' is not so
much a question of persuasion as it is a dilemma in language, in
which the participants engage, reforming and being formed at the
same time by this `rhetoric'; I shall try to look at this in
The Satanic Verses affair, which has proliferated into a
clash: of men and women, values, faiths, words, and worlds.
Notes:
1. An earlier version of this chapter was delivered as a paper
in the ESSE/2 conference, in Bordeaux, September 7, 1993.
2. Syed Shahabuddin, "You Did This with Satanic Forethought, Mr.
Rushdie," The Times of India, 13 Oct. 1988, sec.2, p.2,
repr. in The Rushdie File, eds. Lisa Appignanesi and Sara
Maitland (London: 4th Estate, 1989), p.47.
3. Rushdie, "Choice between Light and Dark," The Observer,
22 Jan. 1989, p.11.
4. These are the terms most often used, while others I have come
across are: battle, campaign, crisis, debate, episode, furore,
issue, matter, protest, reaction, row, saga, story,
subject.
5. Many of the early reviews gave vent to these, and especially
Lawson's review "Fishing for Salman," is often referred, or
alluded to, although not entirely deservedly.
6. Together with the political aspect one should also notice the
persuasiveness of commercial language, especially that of
advertising.
7. La Nouvelle rhetorique: Traite de l'argumentation
(Paris, 1958), trans. J. Wilkinson & P. Weaver, The New
Rhetoric: a Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
8. Victoria Glendinning writes, that "the war between good and
evil is echoed by the one between men and women," in "Channel-
Hopping Culture," The Times, 1 Oct. 1988, p.37.