The Lacanian Real as Productive Supplement to Rhetorical Critique
Abstract:
The purpose of this essay is to advance the importance of the Lacanian registers for rhetorical scholarship by focusing (paradoxically) on the register of the Real. We argue that the Real functions as a condition of (im) possibility of critical invention for rhetorical critique. We advance five varieties of the Real that disrupt the coherence of rhetorical method/perspective and rhetorical formations: (1) the Real as Void, (2) The Real as Return, (3) The Real as Enjoyment, (4) The Real as Recalcitrance, and (5) The Real as materiality.