Ramus' insistence that rhetoric be relegated to issues of style has had a lasting impact on the discipline. To say that someone's using good rhetoric is the equivalent of saying that someone's lying through their teeth, but making it sound good. Such an evaluation bears the mark of Ramus, who saw rhetoric as principally stylistic, rather than substantial. Now, in the late twentieth century, the argument seems to have come full circle. There is no totalizing theory of postmodern rhetoric.
Some theorists seem to have abandoned totalizing theories altogether.
Nevertheless, we're caught in a bit of a bind by our fear of totalizing theory and our need to theorize. Ultimately, any theory can become a totalizing theory. As theorists, we cannot know whether or not our theories will gain enough social force or individual force to become monolithic and catastrophic. Of course not. The fear of totalizing theory didn't stop Deleuze and Guattari from publishing either.