Loving the World Appropriately: Persuasion and the Transformation of Subjectivity

English professor Kastely (Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic) examines the political and personal implications of persuasion in this intricate exploration of rhetoric. Drawing on Greek philosophy and psychoanalysis, Kastely suggests viewing “persuasion not as an action undertaken by a speaker but in terms of a transformation undergone by an audience.” He notes that Peitho was the Greek goddess of seduction and persuasion, insinuating that the two threaten individual autonomy because “in both cases an outside force effects an irresistible change in the psyche.” The author unpacks Plato’s Phaedrus and relates that while Greek poets feared the power of seduction to corrupt the “boundaries of the self,” Socrates saw persuasive rhetoric as an opportunity to expand individuality beyond “empirical, everyday selves.” Explicating Socrates’s critique of written discourse, Kastely contends that the meaning of a text arises from an interplay between author and reader in which readers “arrive at what they take the text to mean,” allowing for readerly autonomy at the same time as it affords political opportunities for forming coalitions based on shared interpretations. The author’s excellent synthesis of the philosophies of such theorists as Leo Bersani, Anne Carson, and Sigmund Freud makes for an intellectually potent investigation of persuasion, though the philosophical jargon may leave lay readers in the dark. This rewards careful study. (Nov.)