Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

some understanding with Jasper Neel’s Plato, Derrida, and
Writing, which bridges Antiquity and Post-Modernity, “classical
rhetoric” and “critical avant-garde theory,” criticizing both
through criticisms of Plato and Derrida, the fathers, as it
were, of the classical rhetoric and the Post-Modern. My
introduction to Neel’s book occurred back when I was working
towards my Master’s. I had asked Bob Whitney, the professor of
that “Rhetorical Theory and the Teaching of Writing” class and
my former mentor, where he had read about, learned about, his
campaign to “write with uncertainty.” He told me about Jasper
Neel’s Plato, Derrida, and Writing. While I bought the book at
the time, it sat on a shelf for almost ten years until I finally
opened it for this present undertaking. When I did finally read
it, I found within its pages if not “the” answer than a resonant
“an” answer. As a whole, Neel’s book is an attempt to theorize
“a new sort of writing” that turns its back (or tries to turn
its back) upon the epistemological roots in the philosophies of
both Plato and Derrida. He defines it as:
[A] rhetorical writing that quite self-consciously
admits its own rhetoricity and carefully delineates
the ethical ramifications of its operation at all
times. […] For the strong discourse I advocate […]
to occur, the writer and the speaker must escape the
binary opposition between idealism and deconstruction
and begin to write - an act that encompasses and
exceeds both Plato and Derrida. (xiii)
Because of this, Neel’s book is separated into two parts: the
first deals with Plato and the second with Derrida. Of the
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