Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 09:43:30 -0700
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-california.com>
Subject: Re: more rhetoric


Diane,

You quoted Lyotard saying:

< Lyotard is a rhetorician in this counter-traditionalist sense, and he
says that the "only consensus" a postmodern writer should strive for,
Lyotard says, "is one that would encourage . . . heterogeneity or
'dissensus' " (Peregrinations 44). (Traditional rhetoricians, and
modernist rhetoricians strive for consensus.)>

I am afraid I don't own a copy of Peregrinations, although I have read a
library version  a year or two ago.  but I don't remember this quote and
I wonder what it means to you, why you selected it here.  Let me
speculate about your understanding of it so you can correctme. 
Understand, I don't have the text, so I am not presenting a reading here
of Lyotard, just an imaginative speculation about your meaning in
quoting it.  I am presuming that the passage speaks to you and says
something you want to say.

I presume that you read this as saying that we will agree only to
disagree, and we are better off the more we can tolerate our
disagreement, the less we require of ourselves to find agreement and
consensus.  Is that right?  I'd be interseted in your reasoning here.


> The most (in)famous counter-traditionalist (postmodern) rhetorician who is
> actually in the field of rhetoric would be Victor Vitanza. His book,
> _Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric_, is a wonderful
> recounting of this battle within rhetoric between those out for consensus
> and those out for paralogy. 

Does he use the word "paralogy"?  what word does he use for it?

> Lyotard is his muse, much of the time. Great
> book. Wonderful book. Greg Ulmer also comes to mind as someone in the field
> who would make the "home" unhomey in this way, and (sometimes) Richard
> Lanham, particularly in Motives of Eloquence.

I don't understand this phrase either "making the 'home' unhomey."  Does
disensus imply acrimony?  What do you mean by "unhomey"?

..Lois Shawver