Rorty's circumvention of argument: Redescribing rhetoric

Abstract

This essay offers an application of Richard Rorty's anti‐foundationalist pragmatism to critique some contemporary work in rhetorical theory, criticism, and philosophy of rhetoric. The critique is based on Rorty's strategy of de‐privileging argument as the foundation for espistemology, and proposes a tropological rhetoric as an alternative to epistemological rhetoric. The essay focuses on redescription as the critical function of tropological rhetoric and as a means of social and political action.

Notes

The author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for the opportunity to attend the Summer Seminar for College Teachers, “The Postmodern Turn: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and Rorty,” at the University of California‐Riverside, June‐August, 1987, and to thank Morgan Eldred, Mark Hickson, Lawrence W. Rosenfield, Jack Diggins, and Ray E. McKerrow for their helpful comments.