http://wikis.la.utexas.

edu/theory/page/critical-rhetoric
The method of critical rhetoric grew out of the tradition of ideological criticism that developed within
communication studies in the 1970s. Whereas ideological criticism draw on the traditions of Marxist
scholarship such as The Frankfurt School in attempting to critique the dominant ideology at work within
texts, critical rhetoric finds its source in the work of Michel Foucault.

Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis
As Raymie McKerrow explains in his germinal essay, "critical rhetoric seeks to unmask or demystify the
discourse of power. The aim is to understand the integration of power/knowledge in society -- what
possibilities for change the integration invites or inhibits and what intervention strategies might be consider
appropriate to effect social change" (91). Critical rhetoricians work in the spirit of Marx, the Frankfurt
School and Foucault to enact two practices: the "critique of domination" and "critique of freedom."
The critique of domination is the critique of hegemonic discourses of power in line with traditional
ideological criticism. The critique of freedom is the critique of everyday social relations as they provide the
space for agency. According to McKerrow, the critique of freedom is perpetual autocritique.

Critiques of Critical Rhetoric
As a corrective expansion of McKerrow's critical rhetoric, Barbara Biesecker argues that critical rhetoric
risks falling into the dialectic binary between hegemonic and oppressed. Instead, she argues that Foucault's
conception of power as the ability to do things within existing discourses leads to an understanding of power
as non-monolithic and dispersed.
Dana Cloud has argued that critical rhetoric risks becoming trapped in both "idealism" and "relativism" if
postmodern and poststructuralist theorists replace Marxist dialectics as the basis of criticism. She argues that
focusing on "discourse" ignores the real material conditions that give rise to and result from that discourse.

Important Theorists
In current usage, critical rhetoric tends to refer to any application of Continental philosophy to rhetorical
texts. While the earlier ideological turn introduced Marxist theory into rhetorical criticism, including the
Frankfurt School and Gramsci, the work of McKerrow and Biesecker (among others) has made French
theory the dominant thread in critical rhetoric. Additionally, recently scholars have argued that rhetorical
scholarship has repressed its psychoanalytic inheritance and must return to Freud (via Lacan) in order to
better understand contemporary theorists.

German
Karl Marx
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sigmund Freud
Walter Benjamin
Theodor Adorno
Max Horkeimer
Jrgen Habermas










Italian
Antonio Gramsci
Giorgio Agamben
Antonio Negri

American
Judith Butler

French
Jacques Lacan
Louis Althusser
Michel Foucault
Luce Irigaray
Julia Kristeva
Jacques Derrida
Gilles Deleuze

References
Biesecker, Barbara A. "Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Diffrance."
Philosophy and Rhetoric 22.2 (1989): 110-130
Biesecker, Barbara A. "Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric." Philosophy and Rhetoric 25.4
(1992): 351-364.
Biesecker, Barbara A. "Rhetorical Studies and the 'New' Psychoanalysis: What's the Real Problem? or
Framing the Problem of the Real." Quarterly Journal of Speech 84.2 (1998): 222-259.
Cloud, Dana. "The Materiality of Discourse as Oxymoron: A Challenge to Critical Rhetoric." Western
Journal of Communication 58.3 (1994): 141-163.
Gunn, Joshua. "Refitting Fantasy: Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Talking to the Dead." Quarterly Journal
of Speech 90.1 (2004): 1-23.
Hariman, Robert. "Critical Rhetoric and Postmodern Theory." Quarterly Journal of Speech 77.1 (1991): 67-
70.
McGee, Michael C. "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology." Quarterly Journal of Speech
66.1 (1980): 1-16.
McKerrow, Raymie. "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis." Communication Monographs 56.2 (1989): 91-
111.
Wander, Philip D. "The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism." Central States Speech Journal 34.1 (1985):
1-18.