Was Ist Rhetorik ? A Question for Ulysses

ABSTRACT

“What is rhetoric?”: In English, zero article implies a generic reference to a class, hence a hypernym, that can then be subdivided into hyponyms nearly in the same way as “What is thinking?” leads to responding “reflecting,” “pondering,” and whatnot. “Rhetoric,” zero article, behaves like a hypernym to a whole range of hyponyms, which, in philosophical craft, generates the whole gamut of “rhetoric of” this or who or when or how and where. The rhetoric itself remained for quite a long time an “esoteric” text, not for public consumption, thus resisting hyponymic proliferation. By summoning Barthes on fascist discourse, Ulysses to-be-not-named, returning to Heidegger, and reading Lacoue-Labarthe, this article attempts to address the question itself.