Rhetoric Society Quarterly May 2018

Energy: Rhetoric’s Vitality

Chris Ingraham National Court Reporters Association

Abstract

From its outset in antiquity, rhetorical energy has been a protean concept: energeia concerning the vitality of speech, and the related enargeia referring to vivid description. Recent interest in affect, the Anthropocene, new materialism, and the more-than-human has only made “energy” more salient, yet more promiscuously evoked than ever. Notwithstanding the concept’s centrality to some major works of contemporary scholarship, the importance of energy to rhetoric has remained widely underexplored. This essay traces some of the quiet history that energy has played in the rhetorical tradition and charts some points of its ongoing importance.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2018-05-27
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2018.1454188
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Topics
rhetorical criticism affect and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Hopkins (2025)
    A Sense of Direction: Rhetoric, Energy, and Infrastructure
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Simonson (2023)
    Postconstructivisms and the Promise of Peircean Rhetoric
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  3. Gries et al. (2022)
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  4. Hashlamon (2022)
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  5. Slotkin (2020)
    Along the cow path: technical communication within a Jewish Cemetery
    Communication Design Quarterly
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  1. Bloomfield (2019)
    The Rhetoric of Energy Darwinism: Neoliberal Piety and Market Autonomy in Econo…
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  2. Jones (2019)
    Sylvan Rhetorics:Roots and Branches of More-than-Human Publics
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  3. McNely (2019)
    Lures, Slimes, Time: Viscosity and the Nearness of Distance
    Philosophy & Rhetoric

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CrossRef global citation count: 13 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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