Up from Theory

Citation
Leff, Michael. "Up from Theory: Or I Fought the Topoi and the Topoi Won." Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, 2006, pp. 203-211.

Summary
Leff describes the rise of attention to topical invention early in his academic career, made interesting because of a push for discipline-specific substance upon which to do discipline-specific theory. Topoi were proposed as that substance for rhetorical theory, a project that Leff attempted to follow. However, it was too much; as Cicero and Quintillian knew, rhetoric is situational, and attempts to theorize make it abstract and devoid of content. The study of topical invention is appropriate for preliminary practice at rhetoric rather than an epistemic end in themselves, in the same way that a musician might practice scales, but not perform them. This is in opposition to theorists such as Boethius or even Aristotle, who position rhetoric as lesser than dialectic and subject to the same methods of study.

The essay ends with musings on the subject of rhetoric's curriculum and canon. Leff writes: "the outward appearance of the classical rhetoric courses I teach has not changed greatly over the years. Yet, as I have explained, my attitude about the subject has changed quite dramatically, and so have my research interests. I wonder if this is consistent. Is it reasonable to teach most of the same texts after the fall of the theoretical paradigm? Is it enough to reinterpret these texts and to alter the relative weight assigned to them? Or is a more basic and dramatic change necessary to break from the inertia of the older pattern?" (209)

Rhetoric is here established as most particularly a teaching tradition, in opposition to the trend of contemporary academic scholarship, which continues to push for the theoretical. Leff concludes with a call for renewed interest in rhetorical education, bringing along the consideration of a rhetorical curriculum.