NOTES TO PAGES 126–28especially of whom this moderation is most to be expected [magis decet haec moderatio]’’ (letter
1062,CWE, 7:201;Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen [Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992], 4:185.
14.CWE, 76:117.
- In America, the 1942 Supreme Court decision about ‘‘fighting words’’ has fueled a great
deal more debate about different forms of verbal injury (insults, racial and ethnic slurs, pornogra-
phy, etc.) than Austin’s reflections call for. Most recently, Judith Butler, notably in a debate with
Catherine MacKinnon concerning pornography, has called into question the practicability of plac-
ing legal restrictions on verbal violence, arguing that insults and other forms of verbal violence
could be ‘‘resignified’’ and ‘‘restaged’’ and their effects could be reversed. In compelling analyses,
she shows that the power of words to ‘‘wound’’ does not depend solely on the speaker’s intention
but also on the situation and the interlocutor’s recognition and reaction. See herExcitable Speech:
A Politics of the Performative(New York: Routledge, 1997). In France, Didier Eribon has analyzed
modern gay identity as the product of a series of literary and political acts of repeating, appropriat-
ing, restaging, and reversing the significance and effect of antigay insults. See hisInsult and the
Making of the Gay Self, trans. Michael Lucey (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004). - Shoshana Felman,The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J. L. Austin or Seduction
in Two Languages(rpt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 34. - Judith Butler, Afterword to ibid., 117.
- Felman analyzes this ‘‘illusion,’’ showing that Don Juan (in Molie`re’s play) creates belief
in his promises that remain unfulfilled, and because of his seductive but unfulfilled promises he is
called an atheist. Felman’s interest in Don Juan stems from the fact that he deconstructs Austin’s
idea of continuous intentionality as an illusory effect, a seductive confusion of the merely self-
referential act of promising and referential constative statements; however, Felman’s analysis also
reveals that Don Juan manipulates thenecessaryconstative assumption of a metaphysical subject. - On Luther’s rhetorical conception of Scripture and on the privileged relation between the
heart and faith, see Stolt,Martin Luthers Rhetorik des Herzens, 47–57. - This distinction ultimately goes back to the distinction between faith and belief, central to
Western religions. Persuasion can asaffective rhetoricism(Quintilian rather than Aristotle) come
very close to religious faith, especially because both operate through the affective organ of the heart.
See ibid., 54–55. The distinction between faith and persuasion, being that between divine and
human speech, remains essential in Luther’s theology.
21.Luther: Selections,15. - Ibid., 17.
- Ibid.,15.
- The myth of a clear and univocal message cultivated by Luther has been put to the test by
historians who have argued that in his case the ‘‘medium was the message,’’ i.e., that he skillfully
exploited the techniques of transmission in order to disseminate his message: for example, Luther
created a transparent book out of the Bible through a calculated translation, innovative chapter and
verse divisions enhanced by print and typesetting, and variousparergasuch as tables and a set of
prefaces, which guide the reading process toward a purportedly clear message. The processes
through which Luther’s other writings, sermons, devotional writings, polemical pamphlets, exeget-
ical works, etc., were transmitted have also been analyzed. See especially Mark U. Edwards,Print,
Propaganda, and Martin Luther(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). For the use of visual
materials in the German Reformation, see R. W. Scribner,For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular
Propaganda for the German Reformation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). On the
techniques of copying and on the transcriptions of Luther’s oral sayings, see Stolt,Martin Luthers
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