Abstract

Traditionally, has played a central role in how classical rhetoric defines, conducts, and structures both its subject matter and its methods.' The subjects of [rhetorical] deliberation, writes Aristotle, such as seem to present us with alternative possibilities (1357a). These alterative possibilities, structured as opposites, precede-as well as proceed from-the study of rhetoric. For example, stasis theory assumes that people find themselves opposed, actually or potentially, to other people in their interests, desires, and motives and that they require the means, or method, to clarify this opposition even as they seek to move beyond it toward consensus. To provide these means, stasis theory posits a heuristic set of categories-of Being, Quantity, Quality, Place, for example-designed to help disputants identify and evaluate the issues in any given case, chiefly by establishing the relative merit of the oppositions underpinning the contested issues: Only those cases whose points of conflict are sufficiently clear-i.e., are well formulated and resting on sufficiently common grounds-should go forward for debate and adjudication. Equally, opposition plays a key role in structuring the canons of rhetoric and, consequently, in structuring rhetoric as both a theoretical and a practical art. Within the canon of inventio, for example, we find appeals to the advantageous paired with the disadvantageous, possibility with impossibility, guilt with innocence, praise with blame; within dispositio, we find confirmatio paired with refutatio; within elocutio, we find a whole range of figures-from epanalepsis to antimetabole to isocolon-capable of pairing terms into stylistic antitheses; and, finally, within memoria and actiopronuntiatio, we find a spectrum of normative terms marked, at either extreme, by pairs such as natural and artificial, open and closed, high and low, and the like. Clearly, opposition is one of the key terms, if not a governing principle, of classical rhetorical theory and practice. But what of its role in contemporary rhetorical theory? In the critical analysis of visual, rather than verbal or written, texts? In images that seek identification rather than overt persuasion?