Breaking Up (at) Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter (Rhetorical Philosophy & Theory) (Hardcover)

~ Associate Professor D. Diane Davis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“D. Diane Davis has written a performative book at the end of the old and the beginning of the new millennium. It's a transitional, yet disruptive book about thinking-writing, theorizing(seeing)-writing, and learning(teaching)- writing. It's a book that hacks into and recodes the cultures of writing by perpetually deterritorializing writing theories and pedagogies. If you read no other book in the next millennium, you must read this book! For if you do not, you will remain in whatever previous century you last thought in and by way of.”—Victor J. Vitanza, editor of Writing Histories of Rhetoric

Product Description

This text takes a "third sophistics" approach to rhetoric, one that focuses on the play of language that disrupts the "either/or" construction of dialectic. It concentrates on the nonsequential third that overflows language's dichotomies. In this work laughter operates as a trope for disruption.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (January 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809322285
• ISBN-13: 978-0809322282
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,247,900 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT about laughter, May 19, 2005

By	L. Price - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While frequent obscure references are made to laughter, this book is not ABOUT laughter. It is about disrupting normal modes of thinking/writing... and whatever the author is blathering on about, disruption does not equal laughter. Interesting read for rhetoricians, bad resource for insight into actual laughter.