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Introduction: Evil in the Agora

This set of papers emerged out of a discussion held at the National Communication Association in November 2002. Organized by Ned Vankevitch (whose response to the forum follows the essays), that panel was called “Evil in the Agora: Public Reaction Following the Events of September 11th.” A group of scholars committed to democratic practice talked about the rhetorical uses and misuses of evil with an audience who packed a very small meeting room. Because I found the ideas presented there to be both fascinating and crucial for understanding contemporary political discourses about nation and war, I felt that they should circulate more widely among our colleagues. I queried Marty Medhurst, editor of this journal, about the possibility of putting these papers into print. I am very grateful to him and to all of the authors for the opportunity to put together and introduce these essays for this special forum. When I first listened to each of these arguments, I thought that the perspectives offered were more different from each other than similar. Indeed, each of the articles rests its argument on a distinct theoretical and critical foundation. Each also expresses its author’s unique voice and experience. Yet, out of the diverse perspectives, a profound common insight about rhetoric emerges. Taken together, the essays elaborate what might be called a pragma-rhetorical approach: in other words, a perspective that emphasizes how “evil” is produced, deployed, used, and misused in public discourse, bracketing the question of the ontological status of evil itself. Where the authors disagree is on the question of whether we should embrace or even see the possibility of the “proper” use of the trope of “evil” in political rhetoric. Hariman, for example, describes the various modes of the rhetoric of evil: in political discourse, in popular culture, in the world of pain, and at the level of FORUM