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The Rhetoric of Judge-Penitence

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Lessons from the Past?

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

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Abstract

The fourth rhetoric of learning conceptualised by Forchtner is the rhetoric of judge-penitence. This rhetoric thematises our past wrongdoing as being successfully ‘worked through’ while they, today, have not learnt the lesson and commit wrongdoing. The subject of such a plot grammar is a condescending teacher who, instead of also questioning her- or himself, has largely removed the self-critical element while lecturing allegedly morally inferior others. This rhetoric is emplotted in a comic mode which is not simply about laughter but about a perception of having overcome division, about rebirth and enabling a higher level of conscience and, subsequently, the pleasure of a happy ending.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a detailed analysis of Merkel’s speech and the related discourse on Europe, see Forchtner and Kølvraa (2012). Notice, however, that the warrants in some of the figures are incomplete (see Chap. 2 in this book).

  2. 2.

    In a similar vein, Kølvraa (2012, pp. 153–174) comments on the temporal as a demarcating mechanism by pointing to the idea of a new European mission civilisatrice which, however, is not imposed but rather offered on request. While he rightly stresses the significance of time, I do not view this aspect of ‘offered on request’ as a necessary, structural feature of rhetorics of judge-penitence.

  3. 3.

    See also Schwab-Trapp (2002 and below), on war discourses in Germany throughout the 1990s, which similarly identifies a shift from viewing the past as restricting political choices to viewing it as carrying a responsibility which calls for and legitimises political action.

  4. 4.

    Reproduced courtesy of Georg Klein

  5. 5.

    I am grateful to the Social Democratic Party of Germany for providing me with the speech manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Bernhard Forchtner

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Forchtner, B. (2016). The Rhetoric of Judge-Penitence. In: Lessons from the Past?. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48322-5_6

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