Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-31T08:06:51.259Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The First Sophists and Feminism: Discourses of the “Other”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Susan C. Jarratt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this essay, I explore the parallel between the historical exclusions of rhetoric from philosophy and of women from fields of rational discourse. After considering the usefulness and limitations of deconstruction for exposing marginalization by hierarchical systems, I explore links between texts of the sophists and feminist proposals for rewriting/rereading history by Cixous, Spivak, and others. I conclude that sophistic rhetoric offers a flexible alternative to philosophy as an intellectual framework for mediating theoretical oppositions among contemporary feminisms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 27 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aleoff, Linda. 1988. Cultural feminism versus post'Structuralism: The identity crisis in feminist theory. Signs 13:405–36.Google Scholar
Aristotle, 1926. The “art” of rhetoric. Henry Freese, John, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, 1981. The politics. Sinclair, T.A., trans. Middlesex: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bacon, Francis. 1973. The advancement of learning. Kitchin, G.W., ed. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.Google Scholar
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1957. The second sex. Parshley, H.M., trans. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Blair, Carole. 1983. Nietzsche's lecture notes on rhetoric: A translation. Philosophy and rhetoric 16:94–129.Google Scholar
Bowersock, G.W.Greek sophistsm the Roman empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Cixous, Helene, and Clement, Catherine. 1986. The Newly bom woman. Wing, Betsy, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
D'Angelo, Frank. 1984. The evolution of die analytic topoi: A speculative inquiry. In Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modem Discourse. Robert]. Connors, Lisa, Ede, S., and Lunsford, Andrea A., ed. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Spurs. Nietzsche's styles. Harlow, Barbara, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dodds, E.R. 1957. The Greeks and the irrational. Boston: Beacon Hill Press.Google Scholar
DuBois, Page. 1988. Sowing the body. Psychoanalysis and ancient representation of women. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Walter. 1987. Human communication as narrative: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia: University of Soudi Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1965. Madness and civilization: A history of insanity m the age of reason. Howard, Richard, trans. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Guthrie, W.K.C. 1971. The sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isocrates, 1945. Helen. Van Hook, Larue, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jacobus, Mary. 1982. The question of language: Men of maxims and The mal on the floss. In Writing and sexual difference. Abel, Elizabeth, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jarratt, Susan C. 1987. The first sophists and the uses of history. Rhetoric review 6:67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarratt, Susan C.Rereading the Soßhuts. Forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Kerferd, G.B. 1981. The sophistic movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G.E.R. 1966. Polarity and analogy. Two types of argumentationm early Greek thougfxt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy K. 1986. Arachnologies: The woman, the text, and the critic. In Poetics of gender. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Nancy K. 1981. Emphasis added: Plots and plausibilities in women's fiction. PMLA 96:36–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moi, Toril. 1988. Feminism, postmodernism, and style: Recent feminist criticism in the United States. Cultural critiaue 9:3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato, 1960. Gorgias. Hamilton, Walter, trans. Middlesex: Penguin.Google Scholar
Plato, 1956a. Phaedrus. Helmbold, W.C. and Rabinowitz, W.G., trans. Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill.Google Scholar
Plato, 1956b. Protagoras. Ostwald, Martin, trans., Vlastos, Gregory, ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary. 1988. Deconstruction and feminism. Feminist studies 14:51–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulakos, John. 1983. “Gorgias' Encomium to Helen and the defense of rhetoric.” Rhetorica 1:1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1983. Displacement and the discourse of woman. In Displacement. Derrida and after. Krupnick, Mark, ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sprague, Rosamund Kent, ed. 1972. The older sophists. A complete translation by several hands of the fragments. In Die fragmente der vorsokratiker. Kranz, Diels, ed., Weidmann Verlag, pub. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Straub, Kristina. 1988. Feminist politics and post‐modernist style. Works and days 11/12: 151–65.Google Scholar