2. I. WRITING (weeks 1-3)
II. COMPUTATION (weeks 4-6)
III. SURVEILLANCE (weeks 7-8)
IV. VISUALIZATION (weeks 9-10)
V. PROPAGANDA (weeks 11-12)
VI. DISINFORMATION (weeks 13-15)
7. Propaganda Fide
Left: Propaganda Fide HQ (Sacra Congregatio
de Propaganda Fide, “Sacred Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples”) in Rome
Established by the Catholic Church in 1622 by,
to promote the spread of Catholic faith
non-Catholic countries
9. Zhèng míng
● The Analect: “If names be not correct, language is not in
accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in
accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be
carried on to success.”
● Audience would judge an argument first and foremost by
its conformity to shared norms, beliefs, and values.
Ethos
● Aristotle’s Rhetoric: “Persuasion is achieved by the
speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken
as to make us think him credible… This is absolutely true
where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are
divided.”
Zhèng míng
&
Ethos
10. ❖ Collective
Memory
❖ Values
❖ Norms
Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law by Rembrandt (Wikimedia Commons)
Keren Wang 2022
11. Codex Hammurabi -
Prologue:
When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki,
and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who
decreed the fate of the land, assigned to
Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of
righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and
made him great among the Igigi, they called
Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great
on earth…
Keren Wang 2022
12. Henry VIII’s
Act of
Supremacy,
1534
”[T]he king, our sovereign lord, his
heirs and successors, kings of this
realm, shall be taken, accepted,
and reputed the only supreme head
in earth of the Church of England”
Keren Wang 2022
13. Constitution of the Empire
of Japan (1890), Preamble
We, the Successor to the prosperous Throne of
Our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly
swear to the Imperial Founder of Our House and
to Our other Imperial Ancestors that, in
pursuance of a great policy coextensive with the
Heavens and with the Earth, We shall maintain
and secure from decline the ancient form of
government.
Keren Wang 2022
14. The Birth of
Taxation as
Ritual
Offering
Warka Vase, c. 3200
BCE, Uruk site
Image: Wikimedia Commons
15. Maximilien Robespierre,
The Festival of the
Supreme Being (1793)
● French Revolution and First French
Republic
● “Reign of Terror”
● Cult of the Supreme Being
● Second attempt to establish a secular
civic religion for the new republic after
the failure of the “Cult of Reason”
introduced by the atheistic faction
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides
17. The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David (1804)
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides
18. Civic Religion
Unifying values of a nation, as expressed
through public rituals, symbols (e.g. national
flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at
sacred ground (e.g. monuments, battlefields,
or national cemeteries).
19. Left: Luxor Obelisk (Ramesses II, c. 1250
BC)
Middle: One of the two obelisks for the
Mausoleum of Augustus
(28 BC)
Right: Washington Monument, Washington
DC (1884)
20. Left: Temple of Hadrian, Rome, completed in 145 AD
Right: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, completed in 1922
21. Fidel Castro
laying a wreath
at the Lincoln
Memorial
during his visit
to the United
States, 1959.
22.
23. “The virtuous will be sure to possess proper
rhetoric, but those whose rhetoric is persuasive
may not always be virtuous.”
Confucius, The Analects - Xian Wen 4 (c.480 BC, transl.
Keren Wang.)
… ...
“He then, who being ignorant of the truth aims at
appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric
which is ridiculous and is not an art at all?”
Plato, Phaedrus (c. 370 BC, transl. Benjamin Jowett)
Confucius &
Plato, on the
proper use
of rhetoric:
24. Persuasion by not persuading -
Wú wèi & Bù zhēng
● Centrality of wú wèi (inexertion) & bù zhēng
(non-adversarial) in Daoist philosophy on persuasion.
● “Those who are wú wèi are without voice and shape,
and those without voice and shape can see without
being seen, hear without being heard. How splendid!”
《文子》
● How effective would a piece of propaganda be if its
target audience could easily recognize it being
propaganda?
25. Benjamin: The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction
“But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases
to be applicable to artistic production, the total
function of art is reversed. Instead of being based
on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice
– politics.”
26. Adorno and the
Power of Criticism
“One should not study the attitude of listeners,
without considering how far these attitudes reflect
broader social behavior patterns and ...how far
they are conditioned by the structure of society
as a whole. This leads directly to the problem of a
social critique of radio music, that of discovering its
social position and function.”
- Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music”
Portrait of Theodor W. Adorno, by Leandro Gonzalez de Leon
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides
