(All notes below have been lifted, sometimes directly, from Ch. 7 of your textbook. )<\/p>\n
Pathemata: what it is in a “text” that provokes emotion. (Plural: pathemata, singular: pathema)<\/p>\n
Aristotle attributes three functions to any emotion:<\/p>\n
If you’re angry, your heart may beat hard and fast and your temp may rise (affect); you will be angry at<\/strong> someone for<\/strong> doing something (interpretation); and you may curse or pound your fist on something (behavioral disposition).<\/p>\n The affect and the interpretation are very difficult to tease apart, but we\u2019ll do it for instruction purposes.<\/p>\n You are watching a horror movie, and the music or something in the film tips you off that something bad is about to happen. You feel suspense and probably \u201ca series of other things as the scene unfold[s]: terror, disgust, and then relaxation, as the tension in your body quickly dissolve[s].\u201d<\/p>\n Often when someone is disgusted, they revolt (turn away), which is a behavior<\/i> prompted by the interpretation. The interp says: eeeuuuww! And the behavior turns away to shield the senses: \u201cget that thing away from me!\u201d<\/p>\n Disgust can be parsed into an affect (nausea), a behavior (revulsion), and an interpretation (a belief that the killer is inhuman). The connection between revulsion\/nausea and the judgment that someone is not human plays a role in most horror films, so that when the crazed killer is killed in the end, sometimes in the most brutal way, we cheer! We have been persuaded by then that s\/he doesn\u2019t deserve a dignified end, and we\u2019re happy they\u2019re gone. Phew!<\/p>\n But this is also close to what happened during the Nazi pogroms. Jews were made to do disgusting thing\u2014scrub toilets, relieve themselves in public\u2014to make them seem less human and more deserving of the cruel treatment they were getting, up to and including mass extermination. Something similar frequently happens to prisoners today\u2014they are refused restrooms or sanitary facilities. As they become increasingly soiled, their captors begin to feel nauseous at their presence and more willing to see the imprisoned as less than human. This affect and its allied interpretation can be quickly tied to a set of behaviors that include indifference, cruel treatment, and perhaps torture.<\/p>\n Once we parse the three elements (affect, interp, behavior), we can see that it\u2019s possible to disagree about feelings. We often imagine that emotions are just natural, that they can\u2019t be changed. But we can argue for different feelings about and different behaviors toward the same object.<\/p>\n When confronted with a soiled and unsanitary prisoner, you may not be able to control the nausea that washes over you, and you may not be able to keep from recoiling, but you can incorporate these bodily responses into various interpretations, making for very different emotions. Rather than deciding that soiled prisoners are less than human, you may believe that their captors are unpseakably cruel for allowing such indignity.<\/p>\n A skilled rhetorician will be able to locate an affect, note a behavior, determine the allied interpretation linking the three, and begin theorizing a new emotional appeal, incorporating the same affect into a new interpretation<\/em>, a new behavioral response, and thus a wholly different argument. When watching the protagonist (Spurlock) in the film\u00a0Supersize Me<\/i> throw up after pigging down supersized burger, fries, and drink, you will likely feel disgusted, but it could play out at least two different ways:<\/p>\n First Possibility<\/p>\n Second Possiblity<\/p>\n A skilled rhetor can zero in on the interpretation linking an affect to a behavior, and intervene in that interpretation to offer another one.<\/p>\n Pathemata, remember, are things that provoke pathos. We\u2019ve covered three\u00a0sorts of pathema:<\/p>\n But anything could serve as a pathema, say in an image or film or song. Often colors operate as pathemata, or body positions, or facial expressions, etc. A beat or rhythm can operate as a pathema, as well. As a rhetorician, you need to learn to read a text (which could be alphabetic or visual or aural, for example) carefully enough to identify pathemata and how they are working, what affect\/interp\/behavior they are likely to provoke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (All notes below have been lifted, sometimes directly, from Ch. 7 of your textbook. ) Pathemata: what it is in a “text” that provokes emotion. (Plural: pathemata, singular: pathema) Aristotle attributes three functions to any emotion: a bodily condition (affect) a cognitive interpretation a behavioral disposition If you’re angry, your heart may beat hard and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":50,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-150","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150\/revisions\/855"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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