Rhetoric conference celebrates milestones

To celebrate 10 years of democracy in South Africa, the Centre for Rhetoric Studies is hosting an international conference at the Hiddingh campus. It is titled About an African Athens Rhetoric and Democracy and runs until June 11. "For rhetoricians and scholars in rhetoric, the negotiated folding-back of apartheid and the deliberative emergence of an African Athens offer a signal occasion to bring to bear the history and theory of our discipline on a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to the exercise of deliberative democracy," said Distinguished Professor Philippe-Joseph Salazar, director of the Centre for Rhetoric Studies. "From the vantage point of South Africa's exemplarity, we want to reflect on the position of our area of studies within the democratic formation and to advance innovative thinking in the study of 'rhetorical democracy'." The conference also celebrates UCT's 175th anniversary as well as the 10th anniversary of the Centre for Rhetoric Studies' founding conference, Persuasion and Power.