BALLIF, Michelle

Fall 2004, pages 5 - 31

Reproducing Rhetoric, Eugenically

ABSTRACT: This essay suggests that the Platonic question "Is Rhetoric a techn?" aims to interrogate rhetoric as a re-productive "art," specifically by inquiring whether rhetoric engenders anything and, if so, by what reproductive methodology. Further, this infamous question aims to identify the legitimacy of rhetorical intercourse and its resulting offspring, by subjecting rhetorical practices to genealogical scrutiny for eugenic purposes: to produce "words of the right sort". those which establish a proper social and symbolic order.