Argumentation and Violence

Another quote from Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1971, which also reminds me of a lot of things contemporary:

"Any society prizing its own values is therefore bound to promote opportunities for epidictic speeches to be delivered at regular intervals: ceremonies commemorating past events of national concern, religion services, eulogies of the dead, and similar manifestations fostering a communion of minds. The more the leaders of the group seek to increase their hold over its members' thought, the more numerous will be the meetings of an educational character, and some will go as far as to use threats or compulsion to make recalcitrants expose themselves to speeches that will impregnate them with the values held by the community" (p. 55)

The authors also point out that argumentation can easily be viewed as a substitution for physical force, aiming at getting people to do something by compulsion. Viewed this way, the textual law itself is an argument, one replacing physical force, like public torture, as Foucault might point out.

Continuing on this line of argument, based on what I've previously said elsewhere, that if the law is a technology, and the law is an argument, it follows that argument is technology. This makes sense to me.