Sweet Reason: Rhetoric and the Discourses of Modernity - Softcover

Wells, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226893375 ISBN 13: 9780226893372

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

In Sweet Reason, Susan Wells presents a rhetorical model for understanding the diverse discourses of modernity. Wells describes modernity as a system of texts which we are only now learning to read. In order to comprehend how these texts organize our world, she argues, we must grasp how reason and desire interact to create meaning. To this end, Wells offers a rhetoric based on an understanding of meaning as intersubjectivity created through the work of language. Wells elaborates this "rhetoric of intersubjectivity" by drawing on both Jürgen Habermas's concept of communicative rationality and on Jacques Lacan's theory of desire, affirming the significance of reason and desire for rhetorical studies. From scientific articles to classroom altercations, contemporary government hearings to Mantaigne's Essays, Wells organizes several using rhetoric as an art, and she shows how rhetoric operates in practice.

Susan Wells is associate professor of English at Temple University.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Wells is associate professor of English at Temple University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226893375
• ISBN 13: 9780226893372
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 295