Rhetorical criticism as limit work

By Bruner, M Lane
Publication: Western Journal of Communication
Date: Monday, July 1 2002

HEADNOTE

Friedrich Nietzsche's aesthetic language philosophy and theory of history, coupled with Michel Foucault's limit attitude, combine to create the foundation for limit work as a form of rhetorical criticism. As a rhetorical theory,

limit work is designed to map the limits imposed by identity formation, including the strategies of remembrance accompanying articulations of collective belonging, through the analysis of controversial speech. In this essay, after reviewing the identity logic derived from Nietzsche, Foucault, and others, I exemplify the utility of limit work by applying it to the process of national identity construction in 1988 West Germany, 1993 Russia, and 1995 Quebec.

Arguably the most politically consequential philosophy over the last hundred years has been a slowly developing critical identity philosophy of language in use. Thinkers as diverse as Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, Hans Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Chantal Mouffe and Judith Butler have analyzed and critiqued the discursive processes through which human subjectivity is constructed, maintained, and transformed, and in so doing have consistently pointed to a convergence between identity philosophy and "critical" rhetoric.1 Central to this identity philosophy is an appreciation for the thoroughgoing interrelationship between discursive practices and forms of community, phenomena solidly within the traditional purview of rhetoricians, whose ancient political art has always been concerned with the impact of language on society.

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