front cover of Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent
Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent
David Williams
University of Alabama Press, 1990
A collection of eleven essays presented at the 1982 Biennial Wake Forest University Argumentation Conference, held with the goal of establishing a recurring informal, small colloquium on argumentation theory at which both established and aspiring scholars in the area can present ideas to their colleagues with the prospect of the sort of intensive give-and-take critiques rare in larger conferences. This volume contains select essays that grew out of that interchange.

The eleven essays coalesce around the general question of "When, if ever, is assent justified?" And, as Professor Cox astutely notes in his introduction, such a question immediately leads into considerations of argument and power. In these considerations, many differing perspectives are represented in this volume: aesthetic and symbolist approaches, rationalistic and formalistic approaches, field theory perspectives, orientations toward various conceptualizations of a public sphere, etc.

Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent is intended not as a primer on argument theory but rather as a look at American approaches to a philosophy of argumentation and argument criticism. As such, the essays probe the implications of both current practices and theoretical approaches: the objective is not to map the terrain argumentation theory has traversed in recent years but rather to plot a route for the direction in which argumentation studies should move. The concluding essays by James Arnt Aune and G. Thomas Goodnight confront these concerns explicitly.
 
[more]

front cover of Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent
Wayne C. Booth
University of Chicago Press, 1974
When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that "you cannot reason about values" and that "the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted," and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a "befouled rhetorical climate" in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremes—defenders of reason becoming confined to ever narrower notions of logical or experimental proof and defenders of "values" becoming more and more irresponsible in trying to defend the heart, the gut, or the gonads.

Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find "identity" or a "self." In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of "systematic assent," Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of "good reasons"—many of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These "good reasons" are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, "When should I change my mind?"
[more]

front cover of Rites of Assent
Rites of Assent
Two Novellas
Abdal Qasim
Temple University Press, 1995
"Written in 1977 and 1981, the novellas translated in this volume form a compelling unity and testify to the creativeness and vitality of contemporary Arab fiction." -Choice Abd al-Hakim Qasim (1935-1990), one of modern Egypt's great novelists, began writing short stories while imprisoned for his leftwing politics under the Nasser regime in the 1960s. This period in Qasim's life, along with his subsequent exile in Germany and his opposition to the Camp David Agreement, led him to avoid political commentary in his writing. He focused on people and events in the Egyptian village and the down-to-earth Sufi Islam practiced there. Still, the history of his political beliefs ensured his work would remain controversial, and most was published abroad in Beirut or Baghdad. The power and inventiveness of modern Egyptian writing are manifest in this first English-language translation of two novellas that Qasim published together during his lifetime. Al-Mahdi is the story of Awadallah, an impoverished Coptic umbrella maker forced to convert to Islam by members of the local Muslim brotherhood. Awadallah's conversion, both unwilling and insincere, torments him with guilt, and he soon falls gravely ill. At the same time, subplots explore the philandering mayor's attempt to seduce his maid, and an affectionate homoerotic relationship between two young men in the Brotherhood. Elegantly narrated and visually evocative, Al-Mahdi illuminates everyday religious tensions in a small Egyptian town. Where Al-Mahdi ends with Awadallah's death, Good News from the Afterlife opens virtually at the mouth of the grave--a testament to Qasim's versatility and compositional sense. This fantastical story brilliantly interweaves a young village boy's thoughts and the spiritual, sensual, and sometimes macabre recollections of a dead man newly lowered into his burial place. Memories and experiences mingle with images of the afterlife, as the deceased is judged by the Muslim angels of death and the boy suddenly hears that his grandfather has died. In the end, the boy awakes atop a grave, throwing into question which, if not all, of the story's strange events had been dreamed. "[T]here's more than Mahfouz in modern Egyptian fiction, and it's good to have Qasim's work among us." -Kirkus Reviews
[more]

logo for University of Minnesota Press
X-Marks
Native Signatures of Assent
Scott Richard Lyons
University of Minnesota Press, 2010
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, North American Indian leaders commonly signed treaties with the European powers and the American and Canadian governments with an X, signifying their presence and assent to the terms. These x-marks indicated coercion (because the treaties were made under unfair conditions), resistance (because they were often met with protest), and acquiescence (to both a European modernity and the end of a particular moment of Indian history and identity).
 
In X-Marks, Scott Richard Lyons explores the complexity of contemporary Indian identity and current debates among Indians about traditionalism, nationalism, and tribalism. Employing the x-mark as a metaphor for what he calls the “Indian assent to the new,” Lyons offers a valuable alternative to both imperialist concepts of assimilation and nativist notions of resistance, calling into question the binary oppositions produced during the age of imperialism and maintaining that indigeneity is something that people do, not what they are. Drawing on his personal experiences and family history on the Leech Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota, discourses embedded in Ojibwemowin (the Ojibwe language), and disagreements about Indian identity within Native American studies, Lyons contends that Indians should be able to choose nontraditional ways of living, thinking, and being without fear of being condemned as inauthentic.
 
Arguing for a greater recognition of the diversity of Native America, X-Marks analyzes ongoing controversies about Indian identity, addresses the issue of culture and its use and misuse by essentialists, and considers the implications of the idea of an Indian nation. At once intellectually rigorous and deeply personal, X-Marks holds that indigenous peoples can operate in modern times while simultaneously honoring and defending their communities, practices, and values.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter