Cover not available
Part of
Persuasion in Specialized Discourse: A multidisciplinary perspective
Edited by Chiara Degano, Dora Renna and Francesca Santulli
[Argumentation in Context 22] 2024
► pp. 153–168

Chapter 7
Persuasion and critical-theoretical thought

| Ca’ Foscari University Venice
Literary scholars have increasingly moved away from the hermeneutics of suspicion, on the ground that this once-dominant axis of reflection uniting Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud and culminating with deconstruction and poststructuralism, has been reduced to an ineffectual set of standardized rhetorical gestures with the sole purpose of debunking and demystifying (R. Felski 2015; R. Felski and E. Anker 2017). In such a postcritical climate, this article explores the link between persuasion and the pursuit of knowledge in the Humanities through three theoretically charged close readings (Jane Austen, Michel Foucault, Eve K. Sedgwick). Discussion takes its cue from the implications of persuasion as a rhetorical tenet and goes on to trace its transformation, first in connection with the rise of discourse, and secondly in connection with the ethical turn in critical inquiry. Ultimately, the article suggests that the traditional tension between truth and persuasion has taken on new life in the polarity of the cognitive and the affective dimensions of knowledge.
Keywords: persuasion, truth, Jane Austen, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, hermeneutics of suspicion, paranoid inquiry, care of the self
Article outline
  • 1.Publicness (Austen and Foucault)
  • 2.Persuasion and truth
  • 3.Paranoid epistemology
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (29)
References
Anderson, A. (2006). The Way We Argue Now: a Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DOI logo.Google Scholar
(2018). Psyche and Ethos: Moral Life After Psychology. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anker, Elizabeth S. and Rita Felski (2017). Critique and Postcritique. Durham: Duke UP, 2017.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition. M. Canovan (Intro.). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aristotle. (1998). Excerpt from Poetics. In Richter, David H. (Ed.), The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Contexts. Bedford Books, pp. 38–64.
. (2000). Rhetoric. Infomotions Inc. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Austen, J. (2015). Persuasion. G. Beer (Ed.). Penguin. (First published 1817).Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1979). L’ ancienne rhétorique [Aide-mémoire]. Recherches Rhétoriques Communications, 16, 172–223. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Bodei, R. (1996). Dire la verità. In M. Foucault, Discorso e verità nella Grecia antica (R. Bodei Intro.) (pp. vii–xix). Roma: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Booth, W. (1961). The Rhetoric of Fiction. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2004). My Life in Rhetoric. In Walter Jost and Wendyz Olmested (Eds.), A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism (pp. 499–504). Blackwell Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Man, P. (1979). Allegories of Reading Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Esposito, R. (2014). Le persone e le cose. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Eyers, T. (2017). Speculative Formalism: Literature, Theory, and the Critical Present. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Felski, R. (2015). The Limits of critique. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2001). Fearless Speech (J. Pearson, Ed.). Semiotext(e): [Distributed by MIT Press].Google Scholar
(2005). Discourse on Language. In David Wood, and José Medina (Eds.), Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions (pp. 315–333). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gadamer, H. G. (2004). Truth and Method. Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Continuum. Second, revised edition.Google Scholar
(2001). Verità e Metodo (G. Vattimo, Trans.). Milan: Bompiani.Google Scholar
Harman, Graham. Object -Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. London: Penguin, 2018.Google Scholar
Kastley, J. L. (1997). Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism. Yale University Press. JSTOR, [URL]. Accessed 28 Aug. 2021.Google Scholar
Mark 4:21. Berean Study Bible. [URL].
Olmsted, W. (2006). Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (D. Savage, Trans.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You. In Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (pp. 123–151). Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, J. (1994). The Body of Persuasion: A Theory of the Enthymeme. College English, 56(1), 46–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walrond, E. (2013). Tropic Death. A. Rampersad (Intro.). Liveright Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Wellberry, D. E. (2000). The transformation of rhetoric. In Marshall Brown et al.. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Romanticism (pp. 185–202). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. (1987). The Child, the Family and the Outside World. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.Google Scholar