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State University of New York Press

Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science

Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science

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Rhetorical Hermeneutics asks whether rhetorical theory can function as a general hermeneutic, a master key to texts. The dazzling central essay by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar questions rhetoric's globally interpretive status; Gaonkar begins with the ubiquity of rhetoric: It is a habit of our time to invoke rhetoric, time and again, to make sense of a wide variety of discursive practices that beset and perplex us, and of discursive artifacts that annoy and entertain us, and of discursive formations that inscribe and subjugate us. Rhetoric is a way of reading the endless discursive debris that surrounds us.

Starting from the work of John Angus Campbell, Alan Gross, and Lawrence Prelli on the rhetoric of science, Gaonkar broadens his critique to fundamental issues for any rhetorical theory and develops four questions that cut to the heart of the possibility of a (post)modern rhetoric: How can rhetoric, an art traditionally directed toward practice, transform itself into hermeneutic theory, a mode of reading? Does contemporary rhetorical theory have legitimate theoretical status? Can an intentional, strategic theory of rhetoric survive the poststructuralist, postmodernist critique? Is the case study, the centerpiece of rhetorical and ethnographic scholarship, epistemologically robust enough to bear the weight of a discipline?

Representing a variety of disciplines, contributors to this volume include: M. Leff, D. McCloskey, J. A. Campbell, A. Gross, S. Fuller, C. Miller, C. Willard, J. Jasinski, W. Keith, D. Kaufer, A. King, and T. Farrell. In a pellucid final essay, A Close Reading of the Third Kind, Gaonkar responds to his critics.

Author: Alan G. Gross
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 11/14/1996
Pages: 371
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.92h x 5.90w x 0.71d
ISBN: 9780791431108

About the Author
Alan G. Gross is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota. His publications include The Rhetoric of Science. William M. Keith is Assistant Professor in Communication at Oregon State University.

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