Ethics in the State of War: Remains/Reminders of the Academic Controversy on Richard Nixon’s 1969 “Vietnamization” Address

Abstract

This paper revisits rhetorical scholars’ academic controversy on Richard Nixon’s 1969 “Vietnamization” address to explore the agential ethics of rhetorical criticism. Reviewing different theoretical positions of ethical criticism in the field of rhetorical studies and offering a close textual analysis of Nixon’s address, this paper argues that rhetorical studies needs to encounter a possibility of the paradoxical articulation of ethics, responsibility, and war. This new approach to the ethics of rhetorical criticism, which uses Jacques Derrida’s deconstuctive theory as a frame of reference to reanimate rhetorical agencies, reveals how the idea of the “ethics in the state of war” can enhance radical transformation of rhetorical scholar’s subjectivity and practice.