272 ANALYZING DATA
- First, it is necessary to delineate the cultural resources—and in particular the rhetorical
commonplaces—drawn upon by the actors under investigation. This delineation is an ana-
lytical description rather than a recoding of particular situations according to an abstract
schema; the categories used in the delineation come from the situation under investigation,
and not from any general account of social life. The method appropriate to fulfilling this task
is “textual ethnography”—a careful reading of the written traces of social practices. - Second, the specific histories of these commonplaces—how they came to be available, and
what kinds of potential they contain because of that specific history—need to be detailed,
particularly for those commonplaces that appear central to the earlier delineation. The method
appropriate to fulfilling this task is “genealogical analysis” of a particular sort. - Third, the deployment of those cultural resources needs to be traced through an account of
the interactive tactics and strategies that actors utilize to draw on the potentials of the avail-
able social resources so as to achieve a specific and unique outcome. Once again, “textual
ethnography” is the relevant method here.
These three tasks must be accomplished in this order, since the analyst has no way of knowing
which cultural resources need to be subjected to genealogical analysis without having first per-
formed a textual ethnography on the material of the legitimation struggle in question. The result
of following this procedure is an account of a situation that respects both parts of the double
hermeneutic simultaneously, and thus adequately preserves agency.Delineating Cultural Resources: Rhetorical TopographiesDelineations of cultural resources available in a specific historical situation must begin by step-
ping away from the tendency among intellectual historians to speak in terms of general and
coherent “positions” or “themes” that attempt to capture whole eras: isolationism versus inter-
ventionism, freedom versus slavery, good versus evil (Foucault 1972; Shotter 1993b). These
“great debates,” upon closer examination, are composed of a number of specifiable rhetorical
elements, many of which are shared between the opposing “sides” of a debate. What is impor-
tant here is not the presence or absence of a particular commonplace among the arguments used
by partisans of one or another course of action, but the pattern of commonplaces that is charac-
teristic of those arguments.
Of particular interest are any commonplaces that are (weakly) shared by the opposing sides,
over the precise meaning of which the parties continue to struggle throughout the episode. The
fact that these commonplaces may be found in arguments devoted to very different ends demon-
strates that they are so widely shared throughout the universe of speakers and audience that they
actually do form part of the cultural equipment through which people make sense of a variety of
situations. The fact that the specific implications of these commonplaces vary so widely demon-
strates the practical limits of the agency that speakers can exercise in the situation: Commonplaces
are vague, always standing in need of further elaboration before they can unequivocally point
toward one or another implication, but they are not completely indeterminate.
For example, “the German nation” as a commonplace does not directly indicate that cooperat-
ing with the Allies counts as high treason, but it does make such a charge possible. The common-
place “the German nation” means, at the very least, that the German nation is a concrete entity
with interests and desires of its own; events affecting it should at least be discussed by the nation’s
authorized representatives. This leaves quite a bit of room to maneuver, inasmuch as the specifics
are still very much up in the air and subject to discussion. And the fact that the commonplace