Expeditio (ex-pe-di’-ti-o): After enumerating all possibilities by which something could have occurred, the speaker eliminates all but one (=apophasis). Although the Ad Herennium author lists expeditio as a figure, it is more properly considered a method of argument [and pattern of organization] (sometimes known as the “Method of Residues” when employed in refutation), and “Elimination Order” when employed to organize a speech. [The reference to ‘method’ hearkens back to the Ramist connection between organizational patterns of discourses and organizational pattern of arguments]).
It could’ve a bowl of tapioca pudding—little floating vanilla flavored eyeballs. It could’ve been the raw bacon draped over that apple tree branch. It could’ve been the moonlight shining through the jar of “Buzzing Hive Jive Honey.” Or it could’ve been the flaming bowling ball rolling down your driveway making a whistling sound. Or it could’ve been the peeled layer of onion spinning hypnotically around and around your toilet bowl, too buoyant to flush, spinning.
All of the hypotheses above can be eliminated and we’re left with nothing and a rejected set of insane questions to back nothing up. Nothing.
But exactly what is the “it” we’re talking about here? Cearly, the signs and tokens of “it” signified above display complex knots of seemingly incoherent and unnecessary concealment—a sort of encoded labyrinth of logic hidden under the rocco embroidery of signification stitched at another time in another dimension by fingers we can only imagine, moving swiftly across the material surface.
What is this? Where are we? What, my friends, is “It”? I will tell you. “It” is the vale of aggressive mystification that spins truth around like a a top, like a White House press conference.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu
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