The author explores the topic of Jewish rhetorics by examining how particular Jewish thinkers have conceptualized the ethical relation between self and other. She draws particular attention to the tacit rhetorical methodology at work in the teachings of Rabbi Yehouda Leon Askenazi. She shows that he distinguished himself from the more well-known…

Reflection in its most general sense just means thinking, so that a reflection upon nature amounts to thinking about the more-than-human world. Implied, however, is a particular kind of thinking, first and foremost a product of philosophical idealism and the analogical or mimetic imagination. This implication goes largely unexplored in…

It is hard to think of a writer whose work has been more prominently upheld as an example of bad academic writing than the philosopher and literary theorist Judith Butler. In 1998, Butler was awarded first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest established by the journal "Philosophy and Literature," and early in 1999, was lampooned in an…

The author responds to the essays in this special issue by noting that they emphasize the importance of careful, complex comparisons between Western and Chinese rhetorical traditions.

Explores an insight offered by Plato in his "Seventh Letter" to explain why the traditional mode-based approach to teaching composition is so attractive and how it can be expanded upon to teach students productive inquiry. Shows how the process-based approach promotes that sort of productive change and suggests how to engage students in…

In this essay, the author argues that the potential for achieving the goals of critical pedagogy would be enriched if teachers had a fuller understanding of the ties between critical pedagogy and Christian liberation theology. While many are familiar with Paulo Freire's roots in Marxism, the fact that his vision of praxis and conscientization…

Focuses on D.H. Lawrence and his being taken seriously as an original thinker. Notes that Lawrence is thought of primarily as a novelist. Suggests that readers should acknowledge Lawrence as an original thinker in an evolving history of the dialogical principle and in a continuing attempt to understand the dialogical and its political and ethical…

Examines triadicity, which commits the interpreter to interpreting his or her own interpretations, as a defense against "gangster theories"--reductivist or positivist reasoning that fosters dichotomies such as fact versus opinion. Investigates poststructuralist understandings of meaning by taking a close look at Paul de Man's analysis of…

Reviews the recent work of Terry Eagleton and Raymond Williams, two proponents of Marxist literary theory. Considers the strengths and weaknesses of each writer, outlining an approach to Marxist literary criticism that blends the two theories. (JT)

Against the backdrop of the passionate and conflicting assessments of Jacques Derrida that followed his 2004 death, this article reviews rhetoric and composition's scholarly appropriation of deconstruction during the 1980s and early 1990s. Contending that the field primarily used deconstruction in the service of refutation, this article positions…

Argues that composition studies could use a paradigm shift: a turning from the threadbare ideology of the text to an alternative so mundane as to be overlooked, ordinary sensuous life, which is not an effect of thought but the basis of thought itself. (TB)

Advocates a position on the margins of English studies. Provides a general introduction to analytic philosophy of language. Elaborates Donald Davidson's work on interpretation, which demonstrates why truth and rationality are inextricably linked to language and communication. Calls for reconfiguring the debate between and assessment of the…

Suggests that contemporary critical literary theories such as hermaneutics, reader-response, speech-act, structuralism, and deconstructionism share with pre-Platonic Eleatic thought a distrust of cause-and-effect reasoning and an emphasis on paradox. (MM)

Defends expressivism as a philosophy of composition against attack. Argues on historical grounds that it was the social reform dimension of German romanticism that inspired expressivism. Presents one of the author's classes as one that is committed both to the mastery of philosophic method and to the development of student voices. (RS)