Rhetorical Hermeneutics by Alan Gross

Rhetorical Hermeneutics by Alan Gross

Rhetorical Hermeneutics asks whether rhetorical theory can function as a general hermeneutic, a master key to texts. The dazzling central essay by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar questions rhetoric's globally interpretive status; Gaonkar begins with the ubiquity of rhetoric: "It is a habit of our time to invoke rhetoric, time and again, to make sense of a wide variety of discursive practices that beset and perplex us, and of discursive artifacts that annoy and entertain us, and of discursive formations that inscribe and subjugate us. Rhetoric is a way of reading the endless discursive debris that surrounds us." Starting from the work of John Angus Campbell, Alan Gross, and Lawrence Prelli on the rhetoric of science, Gaonkar broadens his critique to fundamental issues for any rhetorical theory and develops four questions that cut to the heart of the possibility of a (post)modern rhetoric: How can rhetoric, an art traditionally directed toward practice, transform itself into hermeneutic theory, a mode of reading? Does contemporary rhetorical theory have legitimate theoretical status? Can an intentional, strategic theory of rhetoric survive the poststructuralist, postmodernist critique? Is the case study, the centerpiece of rhetorical and ethnographic scholarship, epistemologically robust enough to bear the weight of a discipline? Representing a variety of disciplines, contributors to this volume include: M. Leff, D. McCloskey, J. A. Campbell, A. Gross, S. Fuller, C. Miller, C. Willard, J. Jasinski, W. Keith, D. Kaufer, A. King, and T. Farrell. In a pellucid final essay, "A Close Reading of the Third Kind," Gaonkar responds to his critics.

Alan G. Gross work is firmly grounded in the humanities, having been trained as a Shakespeare scholar at Princeton under Gerald Eades Bentley. In a long career, he has been an English professor at Wayne State, a Dean at Purdue-Calumet, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of
Minnesota. In the last quarter-century, he has written and co-written a steady stream of major-press books on academic communication.

Joseph E. Harmon works as a science writer, editor, and manager at Argonne National Laboratory. He is the coauthor with Alan Gross of Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present, The Scientific Literature: A Guided Tour, The Craft of Scientific Communication,
and Science from Sight to Insight: How Scientists Illustrate Meaning.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780791431108
ISBN 10	079143110X
Title	Rhetorical Hermeneutics
Author	Alan Gross
Series	Suny Series In Communication Studies
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	State University of New York Press
Year published	1996-11-14
Number of pages	380
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.