Autozoography: Notes Toward a Rhetoricity of the Living

Diane Davis The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Abstract In philosophy and rhetorical studies, self-knowledge inscribes the absolutely indivisible line that separates “the human” from “the animal.” Autodeixis, the self-reflexive power of the I, is the condition both for language acquisition and for reason; it names an exceptional sort of auto–affection in which a being demonstrates the capacity to step back from itself enough to recognize itself and so to refer to itself as itself. What I propose in this article, however, is that autodeixis involves not a specifically human power to disclose an ontological as such (as Heidegger wanted) but the extrahuman operations of an allegorical as if. The presumption of self-knowledge is not an innate quality of “the human” but the already relational condition for any living being that must repeat itself to be itself. A kind of preoriginary rhetoricity, I argue, is the very condition for the singularity and functioning of any living being.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2014-11-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.47.4.0533
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Cited by in this index (9)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  3. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  5. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  3. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  4. Philosophy & Rhetoric

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