Abstract

The process of representation, of naming, of constituting identity, of positing Truth, is a process grounded in the dichotomy of presence/absence, and its corollaries of active/passive, male/female, truth/deception, reality/appearance, wherein one term is valued and the other is subjected--through a dialectical process--to a negation in order to establish an identity. This, then, is the insidious violence of the subject's will to representation: to create identity, either of Self or of Truth, requires the negation and appropriation of the Other. In contradistinction to this enterprise, this dissertation examines how three writers, Gorgias of Leontini, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean Baudrillard, use the figure of "Woman" as a rhetorical gesture to question identity and presence. This "Woman" however--it is my contention--is not a gendered construction nor is it representational of sex or sexuality. Whereas Woman, heretofore, has figured only as the Other, negated term, used to sustain the identity and privilege of Man, here "Woman" figures difference with a difference, as neither subject nor object, within seduction: a rhetorical process that seeks to unthink the Western, philosophic tradition. Thus, this dissertation asks the question: How does "Woman" figure in the works of each of these writers, and how does her figure seduce us in a way that disrupts and displaces subjectivity? By examining the intersections between classical rhetoric and postmodern critical theory, I identify the implications of such a critique for the history of rhetoric, composition theory, and gender studies