ABSTRACT
The issue of “tradition” in rhetorical scholarship has engaged the academy with scholars raising serious questions regarding the existence of a “rhetorical tradition” in Western scholarship. Graff et al., (2005) in their publication aptly titled: The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition, provide a detailed set of essays that addressed the subject matter-tradition. Graff and Leff state in the opening essay of the book: “At one time, not so long ago, people in our line of academic work used to talk about something called the “rhetorical tradition.” It is unlikely that many of us could give a precise defi nition of the phrase, but we invoked it with unrefl ective confi - dence and assumed that our colleagues would understand what we meant. In fact, the term rhetorical tradition represented something more than an elegant synonym for “the history of rhetoric . . . Such confi dence, however, is no longer possible in respect to either the meaning of the rhetorical tradition or the sentiment attached to it” (p.11). They also state, however, that “Over the course of several decades, one prominent group of scholars has argued that the ‘tradition’ is excessively narrow and largely irrelevant to contemporary circumstances, and they have attempted to displace ‘tradition’ with the terms theory or system” (p.11). And they add: “Some of the same scholars also maintain that it is an error to think of a tradition and, under the banner of pluralism, insist on recognition of multiple traditions” (p.11). In essence, there is no grand narrative as the postmodernist would argue. The preceding quotation above provides intellectual space for the introduction and interrogation of “smaller” narratives in the forms of contributions to rhetorical from the non-western world. This work on the African origins of rhetorical theory occupies part of the intellectual space referred to above.
