The taming of Polos/Polis: Rhetoric as an achievement without woman

This essay describes how “rhetoric” came to be written historically in relation to woman's body. It shows how rhetoric, etymologically linked with both woman and horse, was progressively “tamed” into a non‐threatening force, and also how rhetoric/woman/horse simultaneously has resisted this taming. Using a collage procedure to cut and paste textual fragments of writing about rhetoric, the essay constructs an archetypal narrative plot that proceeds tropologically—metaphorically, metonymically, synecdochically, and ironcially—to domesticate and unleash rhetoric/woman/horse.