Thinking again on the idea of rhetoric as a(nti-)historical, and how that connects to an idea, perhaps more prevalent in comp/rhet than in comm (?) that the proper object of study for the historian of rhetoric is the history of rhetorical instruction.  I want to pin this on Sharon Crowley, though I may be off there--it more just strikes me as an idea that saturates.  But if indeed we take rhetoric as somehow operating in a different register (at the least) than history--if it is indeed an absolute continuity or solidity that sees itself outside of time, as Barthes suggests (or as I keep reading an earlier post of Christopher's as suggesting that Barthes suggests)--does that make more or less palatable the desire to somehow link up contemporary pedagogical concerns with historical precedent?  This is a move that's sort of (anecdotally at least) standard in comp/rhet, I think it's fair to say.  Susan Jarratt does this in the last chapter or two of Rereading the Sophists, and in a very sophisticated way.  Others do so in a more pro-forma way, perhaps as an effort to legitimize historical work, or make it relevant, or get it published.  But maybe there's a way to make this move more intellectually radical, perhaps by suggesting or emphasizing the very ahistorical nature of rhetoric?