McKerrow (1989), "Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis"

McKerrow's (1989) concept of critical rhetoric is an intervention into Platonic rhetoric's universal notions of logic. McKerrow (1989) proposes a critical rhetoric that accounts for context and contingency and that "seeks to unmask or demystify the discourse of power" (p. 91). Critical rhetoric works against something, and the process of the critique is therefore a practice rather than a method. Critical rhetoric includes the "critique of domination" and the "critique of freedom."

A. A critique of domination aims to demystify the conditions of domination. It looks for the ways ideology works to reproduce domination.

B. A critique of freedom looks at the ways power is reasserted in culture. It looks for new ways power might express itself.

The practice of critical rhetoric is comprised of eight rules:

1. It is a practice, not a method.

2. The discourse of power is material.

3. Rhetoric is doxastic rather than epistemological.

4. Naming is the central act in nominalist rhetoric.

5. Influence is not causality.

6. Absence is as important as presence.

7. Fragments are potentially polysemic.

8. Criticism is a performance.