Philosophy & Rhetoric Aug 2017

Quality, Rhetoric, and Choric Regression: Revisiting<i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i>

Thomas Frentz

Abstract

In this article, I reexamine quality and rhetoric in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance through Julia Kristeva's semiotic chora. To that end, I review three analyses of Pirsig's novel, reinscribe quality as a prediscursive experience of undifferentiated wholeness, argue that regression back into Kristeva's chora is one way to recover this prediscursive experience, and hypothesize that the rhetoric of Zen is an unstable discourse in which prediscursive energies from the chora disrupt and realign the meanings of signifiers. I conclude by generalizing my work beyond Pirsig's novel to three concepts in rhetorical scholarship.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2017-08-15
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.50.3.0292
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Rickert (2014)
    Parmenides, Ontological Enaction, and the Prehistory of Rhetoric
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
Also cites 6 works outside this index ↓
  1. Consigny, Scott. 1977. “Rhetoric and Madness: Robert Pirsig's Inquiry into Values.” Southern Speech Communica…
     ↗
  2. Davis, Diane. 2010. Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations. Pittsburgh, PA: University of P…
     ↗
  3. Harpham, Geoffrey. 1988. “Rhetoric and the Madness of Philosophy in Plato and Pirsig.” Contemporary Literatur…
     ↗
  4. Lundberg, Christian. 2012. Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric. Tuscaloosa: Universit…
     ↗
  5. Rickert, Thomas. 2007a. Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject. Pittsburgh, PA: Un…
     ↗
  6. Rickert, Thomas. 2007b. “Toward the Chōra: Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention.” Philosophy an…
     ↗
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