*(In the above context, gay means gays and lesbians; historically it
always has been such.)
*
*Some may be interested in this interview:
*
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis/ronell2.htm
<http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/%7Edavis/ronell2.htm>
*Q.*It's not unusual for you to refer to rhetorical operations in your
work or to slip into your own rigorous rhetorical analysis. "Support Our
Tropes," for example, offers a clever analysis of the rhetoric
surrounding the Gulf War. Do you consider yourself, in any sense, a
rhetorician?
*A.*First of all, I recognize that this is not a stable appellation; to
the extent that rhetoric is a feature of language, one is kind of
overwritten by it. I don't see how one could not be inscribed in the
rhetorical scene. But, of course, on a more technical and thematic
level, I am very attentive to rhetorical maneuvers on different
registers of articulation. I tend to try and track something like a
rhetorical unconscious in a text. I am very drawn in by that which
withdraws from immediate promises of transparency or meaning. For
example, I am interested in "anasemia," which is a linguistic force,
elaborated by post-Freudian psychoanalysis, that works against normative
semantics. I am interested in tracking repressed signifiers, including
the relationships between syntactical breakdowns and political
decisions. I wrote an essay, for instance about George Bush's inability
to produce rhetorically stable
|