Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric (review)

Trust in Texts contributes to multiple ongoing conversations about rhetorical pedagogy, the traditional canon, and the role of emotion in rhetoric. Miller's driving thesis is that the Athenian oratorically based rhetoric that constitutes the canon should not receive a privileged and authoritative claim to the title "Rhetoric" but instead should be thought of as a rhetoric, one of an infinite number. Trust in Texts places myriad contemporary rhetorical scholars in dialogue both with one another and with canonical and noncanonical historic rhetorical texts, creating a nonlinear, new history of rhetoric. By creating this "different history," Miller supports her thesis that there are multiple, plural histories and rhetorics, and brings noncanonical texts to the center, rather than approaching them as "other" or "peripheral" to the traditional canon. In addition to questioning the coherence of the rhetorical canon, another pivotal goal of Miller's text is to [re]instill emotion into the study of rhetoric. She argues that in upholding a post-Cartesian tradition, rhetorical studies still consider emotion and reason as a dichotomy, valuing reason and logic above emotion. Miller does not view emotion and reason as two separate ends of a single spectrum and advocates recognizing the role and importance of each in the study of rhetoric.

Trust in Texts is comprised of a preface; an introduction entitled "Rhetoric, Emotion, and Places of Persuasion"; three chapters called, respectively, "Decentering Rhetoric," "Trusting Texts," and "The Mobility of Trust"; and the conclusion "Centering Rhetoric—The Psychology of Anxious Moments and Solemn Occasions." In terms of topical organization, Miller's discussion about emotion takes place mostly in the preface, introduction, and conclusion. In these moments, Miller holds that the universal quest for origin stories combined with revisionist history are responsible for portraying rhetoric as "one discourse replacing another in a sequential march toward rationalism and democracy" (72). In chapters 2 through 4 of her book, Miller places more emphasis on the need to destabilize and decenter the traditional rhetorical canon.

In chapter 2, for example, Miller questions the commonly held assumption that the canonical texts hold such a central position in the field of rhetoric because they are the only surviving or extant texts or because "'the Greeks were the only people of the ancient world who endeavored to analyze the ways in which human beings communicate'" (39). Miller challenges such a commonplace by identifying and analyzing ancient noncanonical texts, both revealing their existence and placing them next to the traditional texts of the canon. Arguing that rhetoric is comprised of culturally situated acts of persuasion, Miller does not merely look to forensic speeches or metadiscursive texts about creating rhetoric, she also looks to literature, drama, letters, poetry, and other forms of communication.

Likewise, Miller also calls attention to the ways in which texts are not inherently trustworthy, arguing that trust is culturally constructed. She explains, for instance, that the canon is considered authoritative, complete, and trustworthy in part because the texts that comprise it "participate in infrastructures of trustworthiness we are schooled to recognize, sometimes by lessons and habits we cannot name" (2). In addition, she uses Shakespeare's work—which she presents as made up of many authors who collaborated with, fought amongst, and plagiarized each other—to exemplify the way in which individual printed texts are fragmented and multiplicitous, questioning the notion of trustworthy texts. Similarly, Miller's chapter "The Mobility of Trust" focuses on the constructed, culturally situated trust relationship between readers and texts, arguing it is necessary to "accept the mobility of trust as a cultural fact" (144). Again, here Miller demonstrates that the canon's authority stems not from the texts themselves but from the "over-determined Anglo-European imaginary that is built by eighteenth-century elaborations of Cartesian rationalism" (107).

Utilizing impressive, extensive research and close reading of canonical and noncanonical texts, Miller not only excavates other historic texts but also compellingly demonstrates the dangers of granting authoritative status to the canon alone...