Sublime

aporia.

absence of any substantive or credible promises of a better future.

aporia, a state of authentic confusion i.e., being confused and aware.

If rhetoric is so mired in exclusionary, oppressive, and seemingly unforgivable theories and practices—then do we really want part in/of it? Is this an instance in which we apply Audre Lorde, or Nick Walker, or Sara Ahmed, and behold rhetoric as the master’s tools?204 Do we need rhetoric? And more, do we want it? Is it in any way a desirous frame?

exactly—irony was defeatist, timid, the telltale of a generation too afraid to say what it meant, and so in danger of forgetting it had anything to say.

The Skeptics were particularly concerned with the sort of suffering that arises from being entangled in beliefs and judgments. Their technique was to engage any particular belief in a kind of cross-examination, and they practiced showing that, whatever reasons we might have for holding on to a particular belief, there were equally plausible and wei