Entering the Rhetorical Situation: On the Place of Time in Rhetorical Studies

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Abstract

This essay forwards a new interpretation of Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation.” It argues that risk is always central to agency and freedom, that it rests on a subjectivity that is always prior to action as a pure potentiality, and that rhetorical agency is always an entering into the rhetorical situation.

Author

• Jon Hoffman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities