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On Rhetoric As Gift/Giving, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I explore the possibilities of rhetoric as gift. I begin with the Homeric gift economy and the rhetorical resources of this economy. My use of "economy" here is not reducible to a monetary exchange system, but rather a more general system of practices orchestrating cultural identity and relations. As Georges Bataille suggests, studying a general economy may hold the key to all the problems posed by every discipline (1991, 10). For Bataille everything from geophysics to political economy, by way of sociology, history and biology, to psychology, philosophy, art, literature, and poetry has an essential connection with …