Emancipatory Movements in Composition: The Rhetoric of Possibility

CHAPTER ONE

Some say that the good is one thing and the bad the other, but others say that they are the same, and that a thing might be good for some persons but bad for others , or at one time good and at another time bad for the same person. —Sprague (279)1 The title of this chapter is taken directly from an anonymous sophistic treatise called Dissoi Logoi, or Dialexeis, and is traced back to the subsequent end of the Peloponnesian War (Sprague 279). I use this treatise as a convenient means to segue into my discussion of the infusion of sophistic rhetorical practices and theory into rhetoric and composition. The anonymous author of this treatise articulates the notion of contradiction as an inevitable consequence of discourse, and such notions of inherent contradictions have become standard rhetoric, the accepted a priori assumptions of postmodern discourses—an understanding that 1 CHAPTER ONE Dissoi Logoi: Neosophistic Rhetoric and the Possibility of Critical Pedagogy truth and knowledge are contingent upon circumstance and language . “Truth,” Richard Rorty writes, “cannot be out there— cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not”(5). This chapter will explore how the convergence of sophistic rhetoric with contemporary composition theory helps us to envision an alternate discourse model, based on notions of logos, antilogike, mythos, and ethos. Let me begin with a disclaimer about my employment of sophistic rhetoric as a springboard for discussion about cultural studies, feminism, postcolonial studies, and composition: as Edward Schiappa has pointed out, scholars do not know exactly who the sophists were nor what unified their particular rhetoric as specifically “sophistic” (“Sophistic” 5). However, it may be useful to look at sophistic rhetoric (in its varied manifestations) as a point of departure from the hegemony of classical rhetoric— with its emphasis on taxonomies and categories. Susan Jarratt has repeatedly made this argument, suggesting that the sophists’ teaching and politics was based on “a materialist anthropology completely antithetical to metaphysics and the hierarchical epistemological structures it engenders, as well as to oligarchic political theory” embodied in Aristotelian and Platonic rhetoric (“First” 28). Moreover, scholars like John Poulakos argue that our picture of rhetoric has been rendered incomplete since, “For over two millennia we have treated the sophistic position as an obscure but interesting footnote” (“Toward” 35). Further, by reconstituting Greek history through the use of the sophists we engage in what Schiappa has referred to as a sort of “useful fiction ” (“Sophistic” 10). Such creative imaginings allow contemporary scholars to critique certain notions of disciplinarity, since the discursive nature of sophistic discourse makes it a creative theoretical tool in which to redefine and explore the epistemological boundaries of disciplinary structures (12). It is from this tenuous perch of historical uncertainty that I will tightrope across the discussion of sophistic rhetoric. As Eric Havelock has noted, “Much of the story of early Greek philosophy so-called is a story not of systems of thought but of a search for a primary language in which any system could be expressed” (8). I will demonstrate how the narratives of sophistic rhetorical 2 Emancipatory Movements in Composition strategies may indeed prove useful in contributing to the teaching of both cultural studies and feminist pedagogy as it is manifested in the writing classroom. DEFINING THE SOPHISTS The term “sophist” comes from two Greek words—sophos and sophia, translated as “wise” and “wisdom,” respectively. The term had honorific connotative meanings, and expressed not only an ineluctable intellectual or spiritual quality, but also skill at a particular craft. However, it also acquired more pejorative connotations , with the implication that one who is sophos may be “too clever and may overreach himself” (Guthrie 28). While the term itself is not difficult to trace, the attempt to define the characteristics of sophistry is a far more arduous task. While there were those who referred to themselves as “sophists,” and others who were labeled as such, the title was ascribed rather inconsistently by various writers, and therefore there is not a singular identifying characteristic of the “sophists” from which we can claim a common perspective or set of pedagogical practices (Schiappa, “Sophistic” 8). Jarratt notes that sophistic rhetoric collided with various “disciplines,” such as the Natural sciences (Protagoras B1–2; Gorgias, On the Nonexistent B1–5; Prodicus B3–4; Antiphon B66C), social and...