A Horse Called Rhetoric

          The car is a powerful machine, full of energy and potential to accomplish great things.  However, like so many powerful things, a car needs a driver in order to reach its maximum potential.  In his article, The Order of Discourse, Foucault says that from the moment it is created, discourse is immediately “controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed,” by a set of rules dictated by society (1461).  The concept makes sense; words have power, but unless properly presented in the right environment, by the right person, in the right setting, words can lose their power.

          Without the reigns of Order, discourse is a wild beast.  Consider the impact of books like The Feminine Mystique or The Sun Also Rises.  These pieces of rhetoric had a significant impact on the thoughts and actions of people in their time.  However, would they have been as influential if they had been presented in the 1800’s, or even today?  Probably not.  Foucault mentions man’s “will to know,” or “will to truth,” and claims this craving is strengthened by “the way in which knowledge is put to work, valorized, distributed, and in a sense attributed, in a society” (1463).  Society’s rules were being re-shaped during the 1960’s and 1920’s; people were willing to question their lives and the standard of their moral compass. The words of Hemingway and Friedan were “put to work” and helped establish a paradigm shift in the world.  Discourse was tamed to free the minds of America.