Provocation: “Forcing” and “Consenting” Social Struggle: Reflections on Rhetoric and Jacobinism

In this paper, after reviewing the Enlightenment-inherited liberal aporia of rhetoric and violence, I build on Aune's work to critically explore the nexus of rhetoric/violence through Gramsci's political theory. Whereas Aune's (20 11) reflections on symbolic violence and ideology provide a first needed problematization of the subject, I claim that hegemony, compared to ideology, is more adequate to articulate the tension inhabiting the rhetoric/violence relationship. That is the indissoluble link of force and consent inherent in the practice of social struggle.