Philosophy & Rhetoric Dec 2023

Postconstructivisms and the Promise of Peircean Rhetoric

Peter Simonson University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article makes a case for the contemporary relevance of Charles Sanders Peirce’s conception of rhetoric and its further fulfillment through biosemiotics and pragmatist-inflected physiological feminisms. It situates itself in an era when rhetoric is undergoing conceptual change, with the social constructivism that guided much thinking since the 1970s supplanted in part by a family of postconstructivisms. In conversation with new materialist, affective, and biological strands of rhetorical theory, the article maps questions and risks involved in developing newer conceptions of rhetoric not limited to discourse, symbolic action, and exclusively human capacities. It argues that Peircean thinking provides resources for nonreductive understandings of how rhetoric emerges from life itself and is pluralistically mediated through the forming conditions and multimodal consequences that materially give it meaning. Contemporary biosemiotics and physiologically oriented feminisms like Teresa de Lauretis’s then move the promise of Peircean rhetoric closer to reality.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2023-12-31
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.56.3-4.0215
Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical theory multimodality artificial intelligence gender and writing affect and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Gruber et al. (2024)
    A Forum on Neurorhetorics: Conscious of the Past, Mindful of the Future
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Cites in this index (8)

  1. Chaput (2020)
    The Body as a Site of Material-Symbolic Struggle: Toward a Marxist New Materialism
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
  2. Gries (2020)
    New Materialist Ontobiography: A Critical-Creative Approach for Coping and Cari…
    College English
  3. Gaspard (2018)
    Toward a Peircean Approach to Perlocution
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
  4. Chávez (2018)
    The Body: An Abstract and Actual Rhetorical Concept
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  5. Ingraham (2018)
    Energy: Rhetoric’s Vitality
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Show all 8 →
  1. Walsh et al. (2017)
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    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Stormer et al. (2017)
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    Philosophy & Rhetoric
  3. Simonson (2014)
    Reinventing Invention, Again
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Also cites 15 works outside this index ↓
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  2. (2007)
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CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →

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