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Persuasion in Specialized Discourse: A multidisciplinary perspective
Edited by Chiara Degano, Dora Renna and Francesca Santulli
[Argumentation in Context 22] 2024
► pp. 154–169

Chapter 7
Persuasion and critical theoretical inquiry

| Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Literary scholars have increasingly moved away from the hermeneutics of suspicion, on the ground that this once-dominant axis of reflection uniting Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud and culminating with deconstruction and poststructuralism, has been reduced to an ineffectual set of standardized rhetorical gestures with the sole purpose of debunking and demystifying (R. Felski 2015; R. Felski and E. Anker 2017). In such a postcritical climate, this article explores the link between persuasion and the pursuit of knowledge in the Humanities through three theoretically charged close readings (Jane Austen, Michel Foucault, Eve K. Sedgwick). Discussion takes its cue from the implications of persuasion as a rhetorical tenet and goes on to trace its transformation, first in connection with the rise of discourse, and secondly in connection to the ethical turn in critical inquiry. Ultimately, the article suggests that the traditional tension between truth and persuasion has taken up new life in the polarity of the cognitive and the affective dimensions of knowledge.

Keywords: persuasion, truth, Jane Austen, Michel Foucault, Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, hermeneutics of suspicion, paranoid inquiry, care of the self
Article outline
  • 1.Publicness (Austen and Foucault)
  • 2.Persuasion and truth
  • 3.Paranoid epistemology
  • Notes
  • References
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