In Christine de Pizan’s “The Treasure of the City of Ladies” I picked up on what I would describe as a pacifist rhetoric for women. For example, de Pizan makes statements that women should reply in a manner that will pacify those who previously had some grievance, rebellion, or quarrel in mind (546), and she also claims that “the good lady will wish to work to make peace” (547). What is interesting about these arguments is that she basically claims that men are incapable of such pacificist rhetoric “for they are by nature more courageous and more hot-headed” than women (547). While this claim is not surprising in light of the time period in which she wrote, I am interested in the way that a pacifist rhetoric would work in deliberative rhetoric? Specifically, de Pizan often positions women in a position of authority in her writing, yet at the same time she relegates them to a mediating role placing them between competing parties (546). Ultimately, if women are seen as mediators, what role(s) would they play in the deliberative process—pacifiers of heated discussions or could they lead the practice of deliberation and perhaps be more courageous than men? I sense de Pizan believes women could play both roles, but so as not to upset the gender imbalance in society at the time, she chose to describe women as engaged in pacifist or mediating rhetoric in the deliberative process.
Ramus on the other hand offers a much different view of rhetoric as he believes it only consists of style and delivery (684). From the perspective of deliberative rhetoric, the absence of any inventive procedure in the rhetorical process seems to render deliberative rhetoric to an agonistic process bereft of any potential to create new knowledge. In a way, it seems as if deliberative rhetoric becomes solely eristic in nature. Perhaps to be able to discuss deliberative rhetoric in the context of Ramus we would need to rename it as deliberative dialectic since invention was in the domain of dialectic; however, since Ramus is inisistent on keeping things separate (I get the sense he didn't share well as a child), if deliberation solely became a dialectic process then style and delivery would not be part of the deliberative process. As I'm writing this I'm trying to imagine watching Congressional debates on C-Span and imagining how reason with no verbal dressing (which Ramus believes is the domain of dialectic) would argue with reason with no verbal dressing--quite boring I'm sure, and more importantly unrealistic.