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Sweet Reason

Rhetoric and the Discourses of Modernity

Susan Wells author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:8th Aug '96

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Sweet Reason cover

This volume presents a rhetorical model for understanding the diverse discourses of modernity. Wells describes modernity as a system of texts which we are only now learning to read. In order to comprehend how these texts organize our world, she argues, we must grasp how reason and desire interact to create meaning. To this end, Wells offers a rhetoric based on an understanding of meaning as intersubjectivity created through the work of language. Wells elaborates this "rhetoric of intersubjectivity" by drawing on both Jurgen Habermas's concept of communicative rationality and on Jacques Lacan's theory of desire, affirming the significance of reason and desire for rhetorical studies. From scientific articles to classroom altercations, contemporary government hearings to Montaigne's "Essays", Wells organizes several using rhetoric as an art, and she shows how rhetoric operates in practice.

ISBN: 9780226893372

Dimensions: 23mm x 15mm x 2mm

Weight: 425g

295 pages