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In recent years, several scholars have criticized the rhetorical tradition and its focus upon persuasion, whereas others have defended traditional persuasion as an ethically viable mode of communicative practice. This essay seeks a dialectical synthesis of these views through a preliminary synthesis of the philosophies of Buber and Levinas. An examination of Levinas's critique of Buber on the question of whether the interhuman relationship is marked by reciprocity or asymmetry will yield a hybrid notion of dialogue, which is both reciprocal and asymmetric and which claims that neither "invitational rhetoric" nor "direct moral suasion" alone can adequately fulfill the mandate of ethics. This essay then clarifies this notion of asymmetric dialogue through an extension of the previous installment of this project (see Murray, 2003). Specifically, it demonstrates how the rhetorics of disruption and supplication parallel invitational rhetoric and direct moral suasion and illustrates how those rhetorics function symbiotically within an overarching, asymmetric dialogue.
In recent years, several feminist scholars have initiated a critique of the rhetorical tradition and its focus upon argumentation and persuasion.1 In their review of this movement, Foss and Griffin (1992) claim that this critique stems from the realization that "most theories of rhetoric are inadequate and misleading because they contain a patriarchal bias-they embody the experiences and concerns of the white male as standard, thereby distorting or omitting the experiences and concerns of women" (p. 331). In a later work, Foss and Griffin (1995) narrow their focus to "the patriarchal bias that characterizes much of rhetorical theorizing" and which is present in "the definition of rhetoric as persuasion . . . [and] as the conscious intent to change others" (p. 2). Moreover, Foss and Griffin (1995) claim that "embedded in efforts to change others is a desire for control and domination. . . . The act of changing others not only establishes the power of the rhetor over others but also devalues the lives and perspectives of those others" (p. 3). In critiquing the rhetorical theory of Kenneth Burke, for example, Foss and Griffin (1992) argue that it "describes the processes that characterize a rhetoric of domination-hierarchical, authoritarian systems that employ power-over" and "assumes a particular kind of rhetor . . . viewed as someone who seeks power over...