ABSTRACT
Since “Arguers as Lovers” was written, the ethical themes it raises have been signifi cantly critiqued. One productive line of scholarship (Palczewski, 1997) drew out the gender/sex-bias implicit in Brockriede’s article, arguing that his focus on the intent of the arguer to manipulate or engage in dialogue (rather than the co-arguer’s reception of the argument as coercive or egalitarian) prevents any truly ethical argumentative exchange, and installs an implicitly masculine subject as the one doing the arguing. In a parallel move, Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffi n (1995), following the work of Sally Miller Gearhart (1979), have taken up the insights of radical feminism to offer a view of persuasive models of communication as implicated in patriarchal violence and to call for an alternative to persuasion in a concept of invitation that assumes “equality, immanent value and respect for others” as ethical guidelines and in which rhetors offer their perspectives “without seeking adherence or pronouncing judgments” (p. 15). This perspective, in turn, has been challenged by a number of scholars (Dow, 1995; Fixmer & Wood, 1995). Most germane in the present context is Nina Lozano-Reich and Dana Cloud’s (2009) argument that a focus on invitation is problematic because it “assumes a shared interest between oppressors and oppressed” (p. 221) and ignores the degree to which invitations, especially invitations to offer one’s perspective without critiquing others’, are frequently tools to disempower the less powerful parties involved in an argument.
