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. In particular, a critical rhetoric is concerned with how systems of power and domination are discursively constructed and maintained in order to construct counter-discourses that might interrupt and, potentially, transform oppressive constructs. This is not to say that McKerrow advocates for a critical rhetoric that points in the direction of some prescribed utopian telos. As McKerrow puts it, “The search is not towards a freedom for something pre-determined. [.] [T]he telos that marks the project [of critical rhetoric] is one of never-ending skepticism, hence permanent criticism” (p. 96). Some, however, have challenged McKerrow's absence of a prescriptively normative telos declaring the “lack” renders critical rhetoric sophistic and politically inefficacious in its move to declare permanent critique socially transformative (Biesecker, 1992; Cloud, 1994; Ono & Sloop, 1992; Fassbinder, 1996). On the other hand, as McKerrow points out, permanent critique that recognizes the contingent nature of normative constructs does not mean that employing it precludes the ability for political judgment and action. Instead, critical rhetoric “is simply non-privileging with respect to the options its analysis raises for consideration” (p. 97). Criticism, for McKerrow, is also a performance and, as such, goes beyond traditional argumentation's focus on critique as an instrument of rationality. McKerrow, borrowing McGee's notion of the “rhetorician as performer” (p. 108), describes how critique--rather than being conceived of as instrumentally rationalistic—is understood as an embodied method or practice. The critic, through a critique of collected cultural fragments, performs interpretations of social conditions and, in doing so, “becomes arguer or advocate for an interpretation of the collected fragments” (p. 108). Critical rhetoric is also performative in the sense that it is part of instantiating--through repetitive iterative processes on the part of the rhetor--a sense of sociopolitical consciousness with an audience, thereby creating the conditions for envisioning alternatives to the status quo. Ultimately, this performance of critical subjectivity on the part of a critical rhetor demonstrates, for an audience, a process of identifying and/or creating the conditions for the possibility of humane social change. As it relates to a critical approach to teaching, particularly with a large number of students, critical rhetoric can be conceived of as a way to foster the development of critical consciousness on the part of students when critical dialogue is not a practical option. In a large classroom setting where a lecture-type format is most appropriate, a teacher who practices critical rhetoric becomes a “specific intellectual” to borrow Foucault's (1980) notion. S/he is able, through her/his performance of critical discourse, to “advocate a critique as a sensible reading of the discourse of power” (McKerrow, p. 108), thereby opening up the potential, on the part of students, for reflecting on this critique and envisioning alternatives to oppressive status quo constructs. This pedagogical function of critical rhetoric acts as a “model” of critical consciousness for students and creates the conditions for students' own critical engagement without having to prioritize student-centered dialogue in the process. Also, when situated in a critical pedagogical approach, the open-ended, contingent nature of normative possibilities in McKerrow's critical