Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons^™

Terms Of Perfection, Art Bochner

Art Bochner

In this essay, I attempt to think with the story Michael Hyde tells in Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human. Viewing the drive for perfection from the perspective of narrative, I focus on the question of how the language game of perfection might lead in the direction of other ways of understanding ourselves, our writing practices, and the unity of our lives. I question the appropriateness of conventions of rhetorical scholarship that inhibit communication scholars from enacting more personal expressions of rhetorical competence, which could give greater urgency to burning issues at the heart of what it can mean …