Complicity: The theory of negative difference

Abstract

The critical consideration of "the other"; has become a key strategy in many feminist, afrocentric, and rhetorical theories of discourse. Scholars in these areas have explicated various indictments of the phallocentric, eurocentric, and essentialist linguistic strategies defined and perpetuated by dominant population groups, and some have begun the difficult task of addressing the complicitous nature of hegemonic discourse. This essay explores the problem of complicity as it is manifest in contemporary critical theories of race, gender, and rhetoric. The analysis suggests that these theoretical approaches maintain the principle of negative difference by their adherence to an underlying epistemological principle of essentialist logic, yet offer the possibility of a theory of rhetoric discourse grounded in an affirmative approach to linguistic and social definition.