Seduction, Sophistry, and the Woman with the Rhetorical Figure

Download or read book Seduction, Sophistry, and the Woman with the Rhetorical Figure written by Michelle Ballif and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ballif questions why the profession wants to retain these beliefs in the face of vociferous arguments from "new rhetorics" that the discipline no longer posits a foundational self or truth, and in the face of the poststructuralist critique, which has demonstrated that founding truth is always accomplished by first positing and then negating an "other." As an alternative to this negative and violent rhetorical process, Ballif suggests a turn to sophistry as embodied in the figure of Woman, one with the power to seduce us (literally, to lead astray) from our truth and our demand for it."--BOOK JACKET.