Murphy, foreword, ix–xi.
In this brief foreword, Murphy lays out the purpose of Reclaiming Rhetorica. He emphasizes that the book does not aim to argue a sustained, revisionist thesis. Nor does it attempt to provide straightforward answers that easily convince the reader. Rather, Murphy says that Reclaiming Rhetorica is meant to be an “enthymeme”: a push to look in new places and ask new questions. Murphy ends with a pithy warning, which he calls “a sort of enthymematic Newton’s Third Law”: “the reader’s mind, once set in motion, may well stay in motion” (xi).
Lunsford, “On Reclaiming Rhetorica,” 3–8.
Lunsford begins by outlining the long, circuitous path towards publication of Reclaiming Rhetorica. She describes the passion that fueled the authors in their attempt to reconfigure “woman’s place in the rhetorical tradition” (5). Lunsford decries the “masculinist” heritage of rhetoric as limited and limiting. She gives the example of John Locke, who contrasted “fundamentally deceptive” rhetoric with the “eloquence” of “the fair sex” (5, quoting Locke 106). Lunsford argues that perceptions like these arise ultimately because the voices of women in the history of rhetoric are simply not listened to. The subjects of this book, she emphasizes, have diverse relationships with rhetoric; the contributors have an equally diverse number of goals. But they are united in their aim to reclaim Rhetorica.
Jarratt and Ong, “Aspasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology,” 9–24.
Jarratt and Ong begin with caution. They acknowledge that their reading of Aspasia will no more capture the “real” woman than any other representation of her has. Instead, the authors value Aspasia as “a rich site for interpretive work” (10) on the concerns and discourses of our time.
Jarratt and Ong lay out the information that can be gathered from the references and allusions to Aspasia. She was an Athenian woman who lived around the time of Pericles, although she hailed from Miletus. Plutarch reports that Aspasia was reputed to be a “Persian seductress” – a rumor that the authors claim “bespeaks a gendered xenophobia” (12). They assert that Aspasia’s relationship with Pericles was in fact affectionate, verging on passionate. At least part of this came from the couple’s mutual interest (and skill) in politics. Aspasia’s place was particularly startling given Athenian democracy’s exclusion of women. For example, it seems that Aspasia taught Socrates in rhetoric. In Plato’s Menexenus, Socrates refers to Aspasia as “an excellent mistress in the art of rhetoric” (15). Socrates then affirms that she was his teacher and expresses his admiration for a funeral oration Aspasia was writing – which he proceeds to repeat. There is some controversy over the relationship of this speech to “the famous epitaphios attributed to Pericles by Thucydides” (16). Jarratt and Ong set aside the question of authenticity, preferring instead to emphasize the “parallel stylistic and thematic elements” (16) that Thucydides and Plato include in their speeches, despite their differing historical contexts and aims.
Next, Jarratt and Ong turn to an analysis of “Aspasia,” the character presented by Plato. First, they argue that Plato is “giving voice to a woman at a time when women were mostly denied public voice, and fixed most effectively in the role of reproduction” (18). This interpretation is complicated by Plato’s ambiguous status on the “woman question,” as found in his other works. The authors argue that the presentation of Aspasia in Menexenus best fits the view that “fourth-century philosophy advanced the task of hardening exclusionary categories” (18). In her speech (as repeated by Socrates and written by Plato), Aspasia emphasizes that autochthony is subordinate to reproduction. In other words, she “distances herself from somatic reproduction through metaphor” by prioritizing “the male citizen’s birth from the soil of Athens” over “his origin in the body of the woman” (19). The authors argue that Plato’s ventriloquism – arguing for principles of exclusion – undermines the presentation of Aspasia as a skilled female rhetorician.
Aspasia, besides being a woman, is also a foreigner. As Plato frames it, it is therefore particularly ironic for her to “presume to have knowledge about the virtues of Atheno-androcentric citizenship” (20) – and for Menexenus to be so amazed by Aspasia’s speech. Jarratt and Ong argue from this that Aspasia’s speech is a discursive space – a topos – for exploring the distinction between Athenian and foreigner. This space is created by a metaphor that links the Attic soil to its inhabitants through different familial relationships: “‘true mother’ for Athenians and ‘stepmother’ for others” (21). The former relationship is unitary and continuous, while the latter – the foreigner’s space – is fractured and discontinuous. This distinction is a powerful rhetorical tool in its own right. This opposition also plays a secondary function that is less obvious but perhaps even more important. The distinction between mother/Athenian and stepmother/foreigner ignores the “strangers” within Athens: the metics and the slaves (who, in fact, far outnumbered the citizens). By masking these power relations that undergird the Athenian polis – and the Athenian economy – Plato wipes out differences within the categories of “Athenian” and “foreigner.” Jarratt and Ong link this discursive technique to colonial ideology. In their reading of Said, “not only does ideology disguise difference in terms of modes of production, it also masks other social and cultural relations of power” (21). In this view, Aspasia is used by Plato to generate distinct discursive spaces which in turn “define, privilege, and legitimate” (22) Athenian views of the world.
Jarratt and Ong provide a dense analysis of the representation of Aspasia in Plato’s Menexenus. The links the authors draw with other theoretical perspectives are promising, though rather underdeveloped. I am particularly intrigued by the reading of colonial ideology into the presentation of Aspasia by Plato, although I am not yet convinced that colonialism is an apt descriptor for the kinds of power relations Plato engages in. Nonetheless, this remains an intriguing, challenging, and convincing paper.
Swearingen, “A Lover’s Discourse: Diotima, Logos, and Desire,” 25–52.
Swearingen begins by recognizing that seeking women in “public and learned roles in classical antiquity” is often seen as “wishful thinking” (25). However, she sees this type of criticism as complicit in the suppression of women and the erasure of women’s activities. In response, Swearingen applauds revisionist histories that critically examine the role of gender in Greek antiquity. It is within this context that Swearingen ventures her article on Diotima.
Swearingen describes the various roles of love presented in Plato’s Symposium: love as a good, “as a social practice, and as part of mythical accounts of human creation” (28). She notes that many readings have interpreted Plato as favoring intellectual, ascetic, male-to-male love over physical, heterosexual love. Swearingen claims that Diotima offers valuable evidence that Plato’s views on love are more rhetorical and more ambiguous than commonly assumed.
Diotima’s speech is presented by Socrates, finishing just as Alcibiades makes his drunken entrance. The oration draws parallels between different types of creation and procreation – namely physiological, intellectual, and spiritual. Diotima argues against Love as a possession, whether physical or intellectual. She chides Socrates for avoiding physical love, since this has hampered his pursuit of intellectual love (that is, wisdom). In discourse with Socrates, she “teaches that neither persons and their identities nor knowledge as a static whole or as a body … are immortal” (30) – in stark contrast with the Platonic theory of forms.
This dense discussion is derided by Socrates, who comments that Diotima’s speech is “spoken like a sophist.” Swearingen suggests that Plato might be using this style of speech to draw our attention to Alcibiades’ comic, drunken speech that follows. This kind of comedy is heightened by the complex relationships between Alcibiades, Socrates, Diotima, and even Aspasia and Pericles. According to Swearingen, Aspasia is “identified not only as Socrates’s teacher of rhetoric but also as his preceptress in his love for Alcibiades” (32). In sum, the depictions of Diotima and Aspasia form a “complex puzzle” (33). Swearingen endorses the idea that these characters are distorted to serve a literary purpose – although she notes that they were seen as quite authentic in antiquity.
Swearingen next turns to “traces of Pythagorean teachings that are preserved among pre-Socratic fragments” (35). Citing Martha Nussbaum, she acknowledges that Plato draws on pre-Socratic understandings of eros when writing Diotima’s revisionary speech. Swearingen then provides an “interlude” of Platonic excerpts to illustrate his adaptation of earlier philosophy to his ends. A key example of this is Diotima’s consideration of Love and the divine, which hearkens back to characteristics of Greek religion before the Olympian Gods. Diotima asserts that “Love is a spirit (daimon) that moves between divine and human traits and beings, linking them through discourse and desire” (39). Indeed, in Plato’s time love was being reconceptualized, moving between gods (e.g. Aphrodite and Eros), a social practice, and an “animating force in discourse” (39). In short, Diotima’s speech represents the trend in moving from pre-Olympian Greek religion to the new, more diverse pantheon.
Rhetorically, Diotima is the counterpart to Plato’s fundamental ascetic idealism. She urges Socrates to “give up his treasures in heaven … and to beget excellence through his talent for intelocution, an interlocution unafraid of love” (46). Plato seems to revile this teaching by immediately following it with Alcibiades’s bawdy entrance. But Swearingen suggests that the Symposium should perhaps be read as “drama, poetry, and dialectic rather than competition” (46). In this view, the opposition between Alcibiades and Diotima is less about one’s triumph at the expense of the other and more about the presentation of equally valid alternatives.
In sum, Swearingen acknowledges that Diotima’s speech “remains a cipher” and that its place in Plato’s Symposium is “teasingly inconclusive” (47). However, a few strands can be picked out of the speech: namely, its reliance on earlier Greek religion and its incorporation of women in rhetorical and religious tradition. Unfortunately, Swearingen’s article is badly disorganized. It has no section headings and few signals to help the reader understand her structure and argument. Thus, the many valuable elements she presents are never gathered together in a coherent whole and the reader is too often left disoriented.