Scientismic Art

In brief, this neoliberal fashion of reducing public discourse to technocratic decisions is similar to what Wayne C. Booth labelled as "scientismic" speech. According to Booth, scientismic speech has a twin brother: "irrationalist" speech. Since life is an economic process, and people, at will, can only conceive, debate and accomplish it otherwise, but can only expect that scientismic predictions will be fulfilled, then speaking of purpose, choice, and social action in societies is nothing more than these societies letting their feelings overflow. This is undoubtedly what Booth had in mind concerning 1968 world-wide revolts at universities.38

It is very probable that guerilla leader Marcos would refuse Booth's irrationalist charaterization, as many 1968 defiant students would also do. In any case, it is tempting to consider Marco's communiques as a NAFTA rhetorical twin. After all, this leader has often said that his movement in Chiapas is strongly related to the passing of NAFTA, an accord often addressed with fatalistic, scientismic, terms.

38. Wayne C. Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent

-Arturo Zárate Ruiz, "A Rhetorical Analysis of the NAFTA Debate"