http://digitaldigs.disqus.com/enWed, 22 Jun 2005 17:52:54 -0000http://alex-reid.net/2005/03/poking_around_e.html#comment-1864188643<p>It isn't a matter of being "cute." I'm not sure what the point of that comment is. The point I would like to make here is that when rhetoric operates on the level of discourse, as if to imagine that all human experience/knowledge is discursive, then it is missing an engagement with the materiality of symbolic behavior and cognition as a embodied process involving a network of distributed, abstract-tho-material mechanisms.<br>We certainly can define rhetoric the way Booth wants to, but to do it would require substantially altering our disciplinary practices. To imagine that rhetoric, as it is conventionally practiced, encompasses "the entire range of resources that human beings share for producing effects on one another," is rather myopic. However, the fact that such a claim might be made does point to the challenge rhetoric faces in trying to see beyond the discursive.<br>This fits well with the issue regarding Derrida. Certainly English Studies has apprehended Derrida in discursive terms, witness Hansen's critique along these lines. However, Derrida can be read otherwise.</p>AWed, 22 Jun 2005 17:52:54 -0000http://alex-reid.net/2005/03/poking_around_e.html#comment-1864188642<p>I'm anxious to read Booth's book; I've met him and been following his work for some time. I admire its intelligibility and, as someone who believes Derrida worship has done more harm than good for the humanities, I'm anxious to read Booth's sympathetic treatment.<br>The point made in this posting about semen and pheremones is very cute, but other than that, I wonder what it accomplishes in furthering the conversation.</p>George T. KarnezisWed, 22 Jun 2005 15:01:10 -0000