ABSTRACT
This chapter uses an exploration of the concept of exchange in marketing in order to construct an initial conception of how marketing can be considered an instantiation of the rhetorical discipline. It begins by considering the ramifications of understanding marketing as an attempt to control the flow of value. It then adopts the idea of the marketer as an intermediary but also provides an original reading of Plato’s discussion of the origins of the marketer in order to provide a detailed, Sophistic, oppositional conception of how the urmarketer functions in society. This culminates in an initial definition of marketing as rhetoric, a definition which is then qualified, expanded upon, and altered over the course of the chapter and its examination of the ways in which Plato deals with the infecting, liminal, dangerous presence of marketing in his ideal city-states. The chapter concludes with an argument, following Lanham (2006), for basing an understanding of marketing as rhetoric upon the provision of services to facilitate the exchange of attention.
