Abstract
The final part of the book addresses the dangers of human exceptionalism. In the first chapter of the section, I provide a brief history of rhetorical theory’s role in human exceptionalism, as well as its ties to various periods (treated briefly) in Western philosophy. As we reach past postmodernity to something post-postmodern, some alternatives to idealism will present themselves, which includes the so-called new materialist subdisciplines of rhetoric. Many of these new approaches are anti-hierarchical systems that treat the evolution of language in a continuist frame. Human speech did not crop up de novo, and it has many similarities to other forms of animal communication.
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Parrish, A.C. (2021). Rhetoric’s Role in Human Exceptionalism. In: The Sensory Modes of Animal Rhetorics. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76712-9_11
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