Aporetic Rhetoric and Spatial Uncertainty

This interconnected system of problems and uncertainties lends communicating uncertainty as a rhetorical strategy a great deal of persuasive power. Both the VA and the CDC use this strategy in the late 1970s through the 1980s when they argued that

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epidemiological studies were impossible to perform based on poor records, delaying

and further confounding researcher’s ability to draw sound conclusions. It was not until

research on veterans who were directly and frequently exposed to Agent Orange that those affected were able to make any viable claims for damages. Those who were indirectly exposed find themselves face-to-face with the presumption of doubt, a policy that begins with the premise of uncertainty. Uncertainty with respect to exposure is codified, systematized, and leveraged against the reality of veterans’ illnesses; the only

way to prove a causal link is through proving that their disease is “at least as likely as not” to have been caused by exposure. Persistent delays, hang-ups, and outright failures of exposure research have only raised hurdles to proving a connection between service and sickness.

Uncertainty can help or hinder the ability for an individual, organization, or community to make both make arguments and be persuasive. Importantly, I do not wish

to suggest that uncertainty is “bad” for rhetorical capacity in every case. On the contrary, uncertainty’s role in shaping rhetoric is highly situational. Someone falsely

accused of a crime, for example, is relying on evidentiary uncertainty to persuade a jury of reasonable doubt. Alternatively, prosecutors and police officers do everything in their power to minimize uncertainty to maximize their rhetorical efficacy. The insight I wish to draw out in this chapter is that uncertainty and rhetoric are intimately bound together, that to better understand both uncertainty and rhetoric, we need to examine them side by side. The vehicle for this argument is the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam, because this situation is so deeply entrenched in unusual and complex dimensions of

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spatial uncertainty, or uncertainty about where an event occurred. This is also a good case study for better understanding how subjects can specifically resist the rhetorically limiting capacity of uncertainty in medical situations. I wish to illustrate how uncertainty plays a major role in shaping rhetorical capacity by tapping into second generation activity theory.

To achieve this goal, I interviewed veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange,

or as I refer to them in this chapter, “Agent Orange veterans.” The interviews used in

this chapter were conducted at a Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post, and participants were asked a series of questions about their service, when they believe they were exposed to Agent Orange, what their experience with the VA has been like, and how they generally view their service in the United States military. I interviewed five veterans, and their interviews ranged in length from ten minutes to thirty minutes. Of the veterans interviewed, the majority reported negative health consequences from exposure, but not all interviewed veterans experienced health problems related to exposure to Agent Orange. However, all the research participants could recall when they first saw Agent Orange being sprayed, or when they first learned of the dangers associated with exposure, even if they faced no personal negative health repercussions. In other words, every veteran interviewed had experience with Agent Orange and its effects. The relationship between these veterans and Agent Orange is a complex set of uncertain circumstances.

From an aporetic perspective, this chapter probes how Agent Oranges veterans contend with a series of increasingly uncertain circumstances and aporetic tactics on the

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part of the VA. Barriers to filing a disability claim with the VA stem from the sheer unpredictability of Agent Orange use during Vietnam. Because there is so much uncertainty surrounding its use, it is difficult to tell how much exposure produces negative health consequences. Because it is difficult to tell how much exposure leads to negative health consequences, it was difficult for government researchers to make any determination about Agent Orange exposure. Because it took these researchers so long to discover they could not make any determination, Agent Orange veterans began to age and succumb to illnesses, injecting the situation with more uncertainty. This was the case with one veteran I spoke to, who felt the effects of Agent Orange at a young age despite being otherwise healthy:

I started having heart problems in my late 20s, and I’m going, ‘This isn’t right.’ And then I had a heart attack when I was 34, and I knew that wasn’t right then. I was a very fit young man playing competitive tennis… and I did a lot of white

watering, but I was always having these pains that I wasn’t sure what they were. And then finally I was at my parent’s place, it was a couple of days after

Christmas in 1979, when I just felt like someone parked a Chevy Nova on my

chest or something like that and I’m lying on the couch… they ran blood tests and found the blood enzymes and said, ‘You had a coronary.’ From then on, it’s

been downhill.

Unlike this veteran, who has survived multiple serious health consequences from exposure, many Agent Orange veterans have passed away. One after another, more levels of uncertainty compound this situation, stifling the rhetorical capacity of Agent

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Orange veterans while providing governmental agencies an aporetic basis for denying remuneration for damages.

Uncertainty derived from the haphazard spraying of herbicide over Southeast Asia has affected rhetorical capacity more than any discursive element of this situation. This is a situation defined by a haphazard activity, using what was a poorly understood chemical at the time, on a population who had no idea what they were encountering. Once we learned what TCDD was capable of it opened the door for Agent Orange

veterans to seek a corrective for their exposure. However, spatial uncertainty– who was sprayed, how much they were sprayed, when they were sprayed – haunts this

endeavor. As I will argue, only the community of fellow Agent Orange veterans, enabled by their communities as well as the advocacy and high-rapport characteristics of the VFW, offers a means of countering these aporetic difficulties.