Contested histories of rhetoric: The politics of preservation, progress, and change

This essay argues that the two principal modes of organizing rhetorical theories in histories of rhetoric, according to influence or systems, are problematic. Influence and systems histories frequently mask or distort the particularity of rhetoric's history, and they implicitly disenfranchise future retheorizing of rhetoric. These problems result from the preservative and progressive politics that inhere in the ostensibly neutral organizational devices of influence and systems respectively. In conclusion, the essay forwards an alternative critical history that privileges the notions of text, particularity, change, and criticism.