ABSTRACT
The problematic situation of rhetoric’s materiality emerges from within the desire of rhetorical scholars to maintain rhetoric as a practical art situated in time and space while also advancing rhetoric as an interpretive art robust enough to isolate the influential character of nearly anything. As a practical art, rhetoric’s materiality is registered in how humans craft discourse for the purpose of making public decisions. As an interpretive art, rhetoric’s materiality is often recorded in the growth of objects that exhibit social influence. From speeches to soap operas and from movies to sculpture, rhetoric’s materiality proliferates with every means of persuasion. As an object of rhetorical interpretation, the available means of persuasion are limitless. Between the practical and the interpretive dimension of rhetoric, rhetoric’s materiality tends to be registered in three ways: “a traditional one that insists upon considering the material conditions of discourse, another that focuses upon the lived-in body as a condition and consequence of rhetoric, and still another that understands rhetoric as itself material” ( Blair 2001: 287–288).
