Recursivity: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Mnesis (original) (raw)

Recanonizing Rhetoric: The Secret IN and OF Discourse

Journal for the History of Rhetoric, 2022

I have included the first three pages as a downloadable teaser for the longer article. The full article is open access and can be viewed/downloaded here: https://t.co/GDfAYSDri8 This article takes stock of current scholarly conversations about rhetoric's ancient Greek canon and why we should and should not make a "return" to these commonplaces. My hope is that it will be useful for folks who teach the ancient Greek canon as a problematic point of departure for rhetoric; that is, a beginning that cannot be accepted at face value, but demands relentless scrutiny. It also offers two examples of why it is productive to imagine this canon as a twofold secret. On the one hand, this secret may be understood as a history of violent acts that have been deeply buried, repressed and concealed (in discourse). On the other hand, this secret is a retroactive realization (of discourse) in which concepts and terminology transform to reflect theorists' investments in empire and conquest.

Proofs of the past: rhetorical approaches to difficult memories

2019

espanolLas disputas politicas contemporaneas en torno al pasado suelen ser caracterizadas como luchas entre los hechos historicos y las narrativas construidas alrededor de esos hechos. Esta presentacion retorna a la tradicion retorica clasica para pensar la relacion entre memoria y retorica y la relacion entre hechos y relatos. Me baso en un ejemplo concreto sobre los esfuerzos para recordar una comunidad desplazada y el intercambio entre hechos materiales y narrativas de la comunidad EnglishContemporary political disputes over the past are often characterized as a struggle between the historical facts and the narratives that are constructed about those facts. This presentation returns to the classical rhetorical tradition to think about the relationship between memory and rhetoric and the relationship between facts and accounts. The talk is grounded in a concrete example of efforts to remember a displaced community and the interplay between material facts and communal narratives.

Rhetorical "memoria" in Commentary and Practice

Virginia Cox and John O. Ward, eds. The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Renaissance Commentary, pp. 205- 233 (Leiden: Brill, 2006)., 2006

Traces the various elements influencing what is called "the Art of Memory" from late antiquity through the early sixteenth century, stressing in particular how it was always considered an instrument of creative invention rather than an aid to rote repetition, and its deep indebtedness to monastic practices of meditation. NOTE: This is only the final author's uncorrected proof. Any direct quotation should be made from the published volume, which also contains the full Bibliography and other volume materials referenced in this chapter.

Memory Ecology and the Rhetorical Analysis of Collective Memory

This paper suggests the concept of memory ecology as a perspective that can help scholars conduct a broader and more complete analysis of the construction of collective memory. Memory ecology integrates the media ecology claim that media are all interrelated and intersect with one another with the concept of collective memory as emerging from the process of overlapping representations of the past. It provides a perspective for critics to engage in a broader and more thorough analysis of the construction of collective memory.

The Grammar of Forgetting: Proust sous l’emprise de la philologie

Poetics Today, 2017

The Proustian search consists of a dialectic process. Time, for example, must be “lost” before it can be “regained.” Involuntary memory itself takes the form of this dialectic: an experience (the taste of the madeleine, e.g.) must be forgotten before it can be remembered. The experience of involuntary memory, in other words, constitutes a type of anachronism: the intrusion of a past sensation within the present. Marcel Proust’s idea of anachronism should be understood in relation to the intellectual world of the turn of the twentieth century, in particular that historical science of language known as comparative grammar. In this regard, scholars have failed to give due consideration to the fact that Proust was related to one of the most celebrated linguists of his time, Michel Bréal. As Proust would have learned from his cousin’s public lectures and published works, there are, in fact, two types of anachronism in language: the irregular form and the idiomatic phrase. Not coincidentally, he explores both of these in the course of his novel. Proust, it would seem, had a far greater interest in and understanding of contemporary linguistics than scholars have previously recognized.

A semiotic theory of memory: Between movement and form

Semiotica, 2020

In the multidisciplinary field of memory studies, remembering and forgetting have mainly been analyzed following two ideal-typical models: memory-as-containment (exemplified by the notions of framework and site of memory) and memory-as-flow (epitomized by the notions of afterlife and mnemohistory). These two models are often presented as mutually exclusive and counterposed. Yet, in linking past with present, and when connecting different spaces and generations, memory is always the result of circulation (flow) as well as of local semiotic conditions of production and use (containment). By investigating memory-making and oblivion-making in processes of interpretation, the semiotic perspective elaborated by Umberto Eco allows us to envision memory-as-containment and memory-as-flow in a combined analysis, where the twofold conception of memory-either as movement or as form-merges. The aim of this article is, then, to provide an interpretative theory of memory, and to identify and descr...