Guess Who's Back Guess Who's Back....

....Why Rhetoric of course, or at least so says Covino! He claims that the recent practice of criticism that allows or reveals the possibilities for multiple perspectives is literary theory's return to rhetoric and dialectic. He includes the work of other scholars to further prove how contemporary literary theory is no longer confined to "literary theory" at all. Now it's all about "decentering", "playing with the text,and "plural meanings" (313-315). Covino claims that "practitioners of postmodern critical theory, with their acute sense of the relativism and ambiguity of every statement, are our rhetoricians." It is our recent "play" with the relativism and ambiguity of texts that creates dialogue. I think writers engage in their own dialogue with their texts, we as readers engage in dialogue with the text, and in classrooms, blogs, book clubs, and OPRAH,we can all participate in a dialogue about the text. THIS IS DIALECTIC!!! Sure we're not philosophers engaged in dialectic like in ancient Athens, but Covino says we CAN engage in a "philosophy of composition that exploits writing as philosophy" (317). So, I guess we could say that by inquiring into the multiple meanings of texts, and engaging in dialogue with texts, we in fact live the life of philosophers.
Also, here Covino quotes Henry Miller on writing "there is no progress: There is perpetual movement, displacement, which is circular, spiral, endless" (317). Covino refers to Montaigne and I think also of the contemporary writer Joan Didion. She too writes to "locate and relocate hersel(f) in the play" and though she reveals so much about herself, questions are left unanswered and conclusions never formed.