At the Limits of Rhetorical Thought: Listening, Wonder, and the Problem of Silence
| dc.contributor.advisor | Crosswhite, James | |
| dc.contributor.author | Manuel, June | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-03-24T18:58:32Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-03-24T18:58:32Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-03-24 | |
| dc.description.abstract | What does it mean to study silence in a field that has historically been the study of speech and language in action? The discipline of rhetoric and composition relies on a foundational equivocation of speech with being and knowing that precludes the possibility of experiencing silence on its own terms. Governed by the assumption that speech is the authorized medium of power and social relation, Western rhetorical theory has represented silence as mere negation and absence of all that speech represents: thought, being, subjectivity, power, etc. Drawing on philosophies of language at the intersection of twentieth century continental philosophy and feminist rhetorical theory, this project challenges the logical binary that functions as the postulate by which the vast majority of scholarship in rhetoric and composition thinks the question of alterity and politics, this project seeks to break with that tradition by expanding theories of silence in rhetoric toward an ethics and knowing that is not rooted in speaking. While my project spans across disciplines, expanding out of rhetoric and composition toward philosophy, feminisms, decolonial theories of alterity, and ethics of interrelation, it is at its core a project concerned with the inadequacy of language and how that inadequacy impedes communication. In her 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture, Toni Morrison says that the force of language is “in its reach toward the ineffable” (Morrison). By rethinking writing and communication with an emphasis on silence as ineffability, as the reaching of language toward and beyond its limitations rather than as a reproduction within preestablished limitations, we may learn how to better know ourselves, each other, and communicate ethically across difference, be they cultural, political, racial, gendered, or otherwise. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/28097 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | feminist | en_US |
| dc.subject | listening | en_US |
| dc.subject | rhetoric | en_US |
| dc.subject | silence | en_US |
| dc.subject | theory | en_US |
| dc.subject | wonder | en_US |
| dc.title | At the Limits of Rhetorical Thought: Listening, Wonder, and the Problem of Silence | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of English | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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