Plato and textual authority : an examination of Plato's dominative influence in four genres of ethnography leading to a postplatonic, rhetorical model of textual authority

Abstract

Plato's authoritative depictions of the philosopher as the sole guide capable of leading readers to Truth develop slowly through his dialogues. Through analyses of the "Meno," the "Phaedo," and the "Timaeus," dialogues representative of Plato's early, middle, and late writings, the ideology-based and dominative characteristics of Plato's sense of authority are portrayed. Subsequent analyses of ethnographic texts seen as primary models of the Realist, Interpretive/Translative, Representative, and Fictive genres, as well as analyses of selected ethnographies representing these genres, reveal the extent to which ethnographers writing in these genres rely on Plato's monologues disguised as dialogues, on Plato's means of displacing counterarguments and objectivizing concepts and definitions through a transcendent rhetoric, and on Plato's methods of textual organization as their means of textualizing authority. In light of both these analyses and the spirit of reflexivity controlling many of the critical perspectives of twentieth century ethnography, a postplatonic model of textual authority focusing on the rhetorical choices made by readers provides an alternative to the pitfalls resulting from the dominative nature of Plato's concept of authority.