Exchange in On the Exchange: A Baudrillardian Perspective on Isocrates' Antidosis

Abstract

Recent legislative action invites teachers of rhetoric to revisit Isocrates' Antidosis from a perspective suggested by Jean Baudrillard. A Baudrillardian perspective positions this ancient text as a rhetorical offensive against the conventional value systems that affix very particular meanings to certain types of education and educators.

Notes

1 I thank Kelly Pender, Bernice Hausman, Paul Heilker, Katrina Powell, Charlotte Thralls, and Thomas Kent, as well as RR reviewers Michelle Ballif and Brooke Rollins, for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Unless otherwise noted, all in-text citations of Antidosis have been taken from George Norlin's 1929 translation: Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Isocrates: Volume II, Loeb Classical Library Volume 229, with an English translation by George Norlin, 187–95, 203–09, 215, 229, 239–41, 251, 283, 287, 335–37, 341–43, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929. Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

2 Here I am thinking of the actions taken by governors and state legislatures in early 2011. While the budget in the state of Wisconsin typifies the kind of slashing to which I refer, merit pay initiatives in Florida, Idaho, and Indiana exemplify attempts by state legislatures to link the value of teachers to particular types of student knowledge performances.

3 Among others, Mirhady and Too, in 2000, translate antidosis as “exchange” (201). In 2008, however, Too translates antidosis as “on the exchange” (87).

4 Noting that “[e]veryone prefers to lend credence to reality to sincerity to the honesty of writing,” Baudrillard identifies a propensity in readers to consider writing in terms of the way in which it represents reality (Fragments 7).

5 See the introduction and “Après l'orgie: Baudrillard and the Seduction of Truth” in Ballif and “Postmodern Sophistics” in McComiskey.

6 Norlin explains that Isocrates “conceived of dissipating … prejudice against him by publishing” Antidosis (181).

7 While discussing the antidosis procedure, Christ situates “the procedure in both its private and public stages” (“Liturgy Avoidance” 165).

8 For more on trierarchies, see Gabrielsen.

9 There are two highly specific plots of the text: one forwarded by Mirhady and Too, the other proposed by Papillon.

10 In particular, Isocrates attacks Athenians who ignore the benefits of educational training, deny the power of the mind, and take issues with his arguments to the contrary.

11 See Baudrillard's For a Critique, pages 123–29.

12 Besides Symbolic Exchange, see Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies. As Gane succinctly explains, death is a wager that for Baudrillard falls into the realm of ambivalent symbolic exchanges. Gane writes: “Symbolic exchange is a broadening out of the terrain of obligatory exchanges of the same kind: from simple exchanges in conversation to sacred sacrifices, and the exchanges between the living and the dead” (211).