Rhetoric and the Generosity Paradox

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Poster Session: Philosophy, Theory and Critique Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This essay complicates rhetoric’s role in our interactions with difference, highlighting what I coin as the “generosity paradox” by which we suspend disbelief and certainty in favor of a constructed potentiality not limited by pre-existent knowledge or categories of authenticity and legitimacy. Touching on overlapping concepts from rhetoric, gender studies, disability studies, and queer theory, the discussion explicates fictional encounters with radical alterity in the films "Her" and "Frank" to show that attempted respite from frustrating, confusing, and frightening interactions limits our voice and voices by rejecting difference as a rhetorical construct, as opposed to the unifying persuasive intent that generally pervades, which more likely involves an attempt to change Others rather than allowing our mutual differences to generatively remain.

Author

• Paul Walker, Murray State University