Rhetoric and Community: The Problem of the One and the Many
Miller, Carolyn. (1993) Rhetoric and community: The problem of the one and the many. Defining the New Rhetorics. Theresa Enos and Stuart C. Brown, Eds. Newbury Park: Sage, 79-94.
Miller provides an overview and problematization of rhetorical theory concerning the individual within communities from classical Greece to French postmodernism. She argues that a New Rhetoric must better consider how community is viewed in rhetoric. Particularly pertinent to Internet concerns (most especially those of WIkipedia) are her comments on ‘radical democracy’ (90):
As conceived of by Chantal Mouffe, radical democracy does not try to suppress conflict but requires it and creates ‘equivalence’ between different struggles; it is a matter ‘not of establishing a mere alliance between given interests but of actually modifying the very identity of these forces.’ This is possible only when social agents and the political community are conceived of not as essentialized entities but as ‘discursive surfaces.’Miller ends by calling for a notion of community that is not geographic or demographic or empirical, but rather a rhetorical construction that facilitates emotional solidarity and political action.