Being Made Strange

Bradford Vivian is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Vanderbilt University.

"Acknowledging the importance of the 'middle voice' of rhetoric is a worthwhile endeavor. For this, Vivian's goals are to be applauded." — Rhetoric and Public Affairs"This is a crisply written, broadly informed, and carefully argued work in which the defining tendencies of the Western rhetorical tradition, broadly conceived, are rethought. These tendencies, above all, those pertaining to universalization and representation, are suggestively rethought in light of Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and other important theorists. Even where one is disposed to disagree with the author (indeed, especially at these points), one can learn much from this work. For it is a painstaking, honest, and admirably clear attempt to not only think anew what has been traditionally supposed but also what has, until now, remained unthought. The particular treatments of ethos, representation, memory, and silence are of value to virtually anyone working in the intersection among various disciplines (e.g., philosophy, rhetoric, literary theory, and cultural studies)." — Vincent Colapietro, author of Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom: John William Miller and the Crises of Modernity"Rhetoric is recast in several ways here—and this should be the task of contemporary rhetoricians and rhetorical theorists—to attempt to re-vision rhetoric in ways that are appropriate for the twenty-first century. The author addresses issues of representation, the 'Other,' and silence, for example. I am not familiar with any text that so comprehensively approaches a transformation of the notion of rhetoric." — Karen A. Foss, coeditor of Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, Third Edition

• Preface Introduction Rhetorical Being Part I: Beyond Representation 1. The Subject and Object of Representation The Circle of Metaphysics The End of Rhetoric? A Crisis of Representation The Subject and Object of Rhetoric 2. The Ideal of Rhetoric Logocentrism and Rhetoric Rhetoric in the Active Voice Part II: Being Otherwise 3. Rhetoric in the Middle Voice Rhetoric Made Stranger The Middle Voice of Persuasion Discourse, Form, and Ethos 4. Style without Identity Style and Humanism Style Redux Politics, Ethics, and Alterity Rhetoric and Style Reconfigured Part III: Rhetoric and the Politics of Self and Other 5. Jefferson's Other Memory's Desires Memory's Memory 6. The Rest Is Silence Silence as Representation Silence as an Origin Silence as a Rhetorical Condition Conclusion: Rhetoric in a Nonmoral Sense Notes Bibliography Index