Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric

Victor J. Vitanza

Nov 1996 · State University of New York Press

About this eBook

Vitanza introduces his book with the questions: "What Do I Want, Wanting to Write This ('our') Book? What Do I Want, Wanting You to Read This ('our') Book?" Thereafter, in a series of chapters and excursions and as schizographer of rhetorics (erotics), he interrogates three recent, influential historians of Sophists (Edward Schiappa, John Poulakos, and Susan Jarratt), and how these historians as well as others represent Sophists and, in particular, Isocrates and Gorgias under the sign of the negative. Vitanza concludes—rather rebegins in a sophistic-performative excursus—with a prelude to future (anterior) histories of rhetorics. Vitanza asks: "What will have been anti-Oedipalizedized (de-negated) hysteries of rhetorics? What will have they looked like, sounded, read like? Or to ask affirmatively, what, then, will have libidinalized-hysteries of rhetorics looked, sounded, read like?"

About the author

Victor J. Vitanza is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the editor of two books, PRE/TEXT: The First Decade and Writing Histories of Rhetoric.