• blogging
• book reviews
• Isocrates
• rhetoric

I have a confession to make. This is my very first blog. Ever. As someone who has never kept a real diary (except for a nitty-gritty day planner) and remained a spectator of others sparring in electronic spaces, I am approaching this task with some trepidation. To me, it is not unlike shouting to attract attention to myself in the midst of a crowded hall where people have gathered to chat, to network and generally do things unrelated to what I have to say.

To get around the unease of speaking to an indifferent and potentially hostile world out there, authors from Plato to Kenneth Burke have imagined cozier scenarios of communication. Plato invented the dialogue, Burke came up with the metaphor of unending conversation. No wonder that Plato's Socrates failed miserably--indeed, fatally--when he faced the crowd of Athenian jurors in his trial in the “Apology.” By contrast, he is at his most persuasive when he has an impressionable youth all to himself, as is the case in the Phaedrus.

So, thank you, Jim Aune, for giving me a friendly push to enter this new and scary arena. It’s high time to get out of my comfort zone and begin practicing what I preach (after all, I did write a book about Isocrates, that ancient proto-blogger). Of course, Isocrates had his pan-Hellenic ax to grind. While I claim no such grand political agenda, I am in the rhetoric business—an occupation perpetually haunted by fears of irrelevance, if not extinction. Blogora, then, presents a suitable forum for discussing all things rhetorical, even though the sight of picturesque ruins that greets its electronic visitors may induce agoraphobia.

Blogs are a strange animal--they don't really belong to a particular genre, hence the difficulty of finding the right formula behind which one can hide. They are expected to be both intimate and public, casual yet fluent. They have been hailed as a sure sign of popular reclamation of the public sphere and derided as yet another form of solipsistic escapism. Perhaps they are all of those things. Perhaps I should console myself that no one reading this post would expect Henry Jamesian polish.

But enough navel-gazing. I am here to enter as many conversations as possible on all things rhetorical. One of my professional duties is editing book reviews for the Rhetoric Society Quarterly. It is a gratifying but also potentially frustrating task—there are many more good books than we can possibly review within the strict page limit of the journal. If Blogora’s participants are interested, maybe we can begin reviewing books here. I can act as a moderator/editor for this feature to ensure the quality of reviews and credibility of the process. Let me know what you think of this idea!

• Katya Haskins's blog
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