Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition (Rhetoric and Society) - Hardcover

Atwill, Janet M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801432634 ISBN 13: 9780801432637

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Thoroughly embedded in postmodern theory, this book offers a critique of traditional conceptions of the liberal arts, exploring the challenges posed by cultural diversity to the aims and methods of a humanist education. Janet M. Atwill investigates a neglected tradition of rhetoric, exemplified by Protagoras and Isocorates, and preserved in Aristotle's Rhetoric. This tradition was rooted in the ancient sophistic and platonic conceptions of techné, or productive knowledge, that appears both in literary texts from the seventh century B.C.E. and in medical and technical treatises from the fifth century B.C.E. Atwill examines these traditions, together with sophistic and platonic conceptions, and considers the commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric by E. M. Cope and William S. J. Grimaldi, where the concepts of techné and productive knowledge disappear in the modern opposition between theory and practice.

Since models of knowledge are closely tied to models of subjectivity, Atwill's examination of techné also explores the role of political, economic, and educational institutions in standardizing a specific model for subjectivity. She argues that the liberal arts traditions largely eclipsed the social and political functions of rhetoric, transforming it from an art of disrupting and reinventing lines of power to a discipline of producing a normative subject, defined by virtue but modeled on a specific gender and class type.

About this title

About the Author:

Janet M. Atwill is Professor of English at University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She is the coeditor of The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition.

Review:

"Rhetoric Reclaimed offers a unique and carefully considered blend of classical and postmodern approaches to rhetoric. By placing Aristotle and Bourdieu in dialogue, Atwill envisions rhetoric as an art of intervention rather than of representation, and her argument productively enlarges our understanding both of the history of rhetoric and of its place in contemporary liberal arts education."

(Michael Leffco, author of Reading Rhetorical Texts: An Introduction to Criticism)

"This is an important book. To invite students to participate in constructing the standards of value and advantage in our culture is a vital pedagogical goal. Rhetoric Reclaimed advances us a long way toward that goal by helping us reconceive both the domain of productive knowledge and the intriguing range of rhetoric's possibilities as a productive art."

(Frederick J. Antczak, author of Thought and Character: The Rhetoric of Democratic Education)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0801432634
• ISBN 13: 9780801432637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254