To read what is not written: from psychoanalysis to rhetoric and back

Abstract

One of the grand narratives of modernity, psychoanalysis can be read as a genre of speculative discourse that, recognizing the force of living speech, places itself in competition with philosophy and rhetoric. Performative through and through, it uncovers the ambiguity of meaning as it flows from speakers to addressees who stand to the former as more than themselves. Given its emphasis on language and the pragmatic contexts in which analytic discourse acts to establish and recreate reality, psychoanalysis bears undeniable affinity to rhetoric and, by extension, communication studies and media studies. This themed issue assembles four essays that explore the productive potentials of psychoanalysis to rhetoric and communication studies, and vice versa. Taken together, they demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalytic perspectives to rhetorical inquiries, especially when they respond to rhetoric's original vocation as technê and epistêmê.