Thoroughly embedded in postmodern theory, this text offers a critique of traditional conceptions of the liberal arts, exploring the challenges posed by cultural diversity to the aims and methods of a humanist education. Janet M. Atwill investigates what she regards as a neglected tradition of rhetoric, exemplified by Protagoras and Iscorates, and preserved in Aristotle's "Rhetoric". This tradition was rooted in the ancient sophistic and Platonic conceptions of "techne", or productive knowledge which appears both in literary texts from the 7th century BC and in medical and technical treatises from the 5th century BC. Atwell examines these traditions, together with sophistic and Platonic conceptions and considers the commentaries on Aristotle's "Rhetoric" by E.M. Cope and William S.J. Grimaldi, where the concepts of techne and productive knowledge disappear into the modern opposition between theory and practice. Since models of knowledge are closely tied to models of subjectivity, Atwill's examination of techne also explores the role of political, economic and educational institutions in standardizing a specific model for subjectivity. She argues that the liberal arts traditions largely eclipsed the social and political functions of rhetoric, transforming it from an art of disrupting and reinventing lines of power to a discipline of producing a normative subject, defined by virtue but modelled on a specific gender and class type.