It is not typically the bent of infrastructure to be continually responsive in a way that is expansive and inclusive; instead, for newcomers or those with alternative histories, aims, vision, values, and perspectives, the inertia of infrastructure is more likely to be experienced as infrastructural breakdowns. We ask: What might wisdom look like in these “structured” encounters? That is, what is the intellectual work of rhetoric on those thin ledges where institutional chronos shapes and limits possibilities for knowledge work and working relationships among people who likely would not have otherwise met? In response, we advance a framework for a constructive approach to infrastructure—one that prizes deliberation over rationalization and actively attends to the warrants underlying calls for public engagement. We first consider the relationship between infrastructure, rhetorical wisdom, and the imagination of possibilities, then lay out a framework for cultivating rhetorical wisdom in response to infrastructure breakdowns.

With Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics, Michele Kennerly has produced an erudite contribution to the fields of ancient rhetoric, intellectual history, and c...

This essay argues that medieval bestiaries are dependent on and best understood through a process of rhetorical hermeneutics indebted to Augustine’s theory of interpretation. The essay suggests that texts such as the Aberdeen Bestiary leverage the instability of allegorical and the clarity of tropological representation to blur the line between human and nonhuman, encouraging the reader to reflect on predatory human-animal relationships and act to reduce actions that impact the natural world.

Book Review| December 01 2018 Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective. By Richard Flower. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; pp. x + 284. $99.00 cloth. Jordan Loveridge Jordan Loveridge Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2018) 21 (4): 747–749. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.4.0747 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jordan Loveridge; Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2018; 21 (4): 747–749. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.4.0747 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2018 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

ABSTRACTThis article explores Thomas Aquinas's interrelated views of rhetoric and deliberation, particularly through his commentaries on Aristotle and his Summa theologiae. It argues that while articulating a largely Boethian understanding of rhetoric as consideration of uncertain matters, Aquinas also advances a theory of deliberation indebted to Aristotelian theories of sensation and phantasia. Building from previous work on phantasia in Aristotle's works, I argue that, in Aquinas's view, rhetorical deliberation is dependent on sensory information experienced through phantasia. Gathered through time and experience, sensory information serves as the foundational material for other forms of reasoning, such as deliberation and practical wisdom. In articulating Aquinas's views of rhetoric and deliberation, I suggest that the relationship between rhetoric and logic within Aquinas's system of thought be reconsidered, with rhetoric playing a prominent role in the consideration of variable and human phenomena.