“This renegade line of thought values rhetoric not as ‘formulaic discourse’ or pure technique, but rather as the activity of learning and wondering; a process that eschews the constraints of a singular ‘purpose or end or stance’ and cultivates instead a ‘suppleness of mind’ well-suited to address continuously evolving social contexts.”
— T. R. Johnson
Key Terms: Renegade Rhetoric
T. R. Johnson describes “renegade rhetoric” as a “pleasure-oriented, magical tradition,” an approach to composition as something powerful that can be enjoyed (4). In framing this discussion of pleasure, Johnson cites ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias’s theory of rhetoric, noting, that the first step to students’ learning of composition, particularly persuasion, requires the student to “first learn to experience composing itself as a kind of pleasure-charged performance” (2). Further, Johnson derives from Gorgias a “working definition of authorial pleasure,” describing it as “the feeling that ensues during the composition process that is roughly analogous to the transformation of pain and alienation into knowledge and connection, and its contagious quality is the stuff of persuasion, perhaps of communication” (2). However, Johnson also observes that “[Gorgias] explicitly understands the contagion of pleasure in terms of magical spells and witchcraft” and that occult thematic symbolism surfaces throughout the history of rhetoric whenever pleasure is discussed, right up to Peter Elbow in the 1990s (3). This makes Johnson, for me, a landmark thinking in the world of deciphering the magical practice of writing.