Logos without Rhetoric

Logos without Rhetoric
Author: Robin Reames
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2017-06-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1611177693

A germinal examination of rhetoric's beginnings through pre-fourth-century Greek texts How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called "rhetoric"? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences, if any, among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized—or perhaps invented—their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato's coining of the term rhetoric (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle's full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E. The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric's beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts. Edward Schiappa, head of Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides an afterword.

Public Forgetting

Public Forgetting
Author: Bradford Vivian
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0271075007

Forgetting is usually juxtaposed with memory as its opposite in a negative way: it is seen as the loss of the ability to remember, or, ironically, as the inevitable process of distortion or dissolution that accompanies attempts to commemorate the past. The civic emphasis on the crucial importance of preserving lessons from the past to prevent us from repeating mistakes that led to violence and injustice, invoked most poignantly in the call of “Never again” from Holocaust survivors, tends to promote a view of forgetting as verging on sin or irresponsibility. In this book, Bradford Vivian hopes to put a much more positive spin on forgetting by elucidating its constitutive role in the formation and transformation of public memory. Using examples ranging from classical rhetoric to contemporary crises like 9/11, Public Forgetting demonstrates how, contrary to conventional wisdom, communities may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment concerning the lessons and responsibilities of their shared past.

John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion

John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion
Author: John M. Murphy
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1628953489

The first serious study of his discourse in nearly a quarter century, John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion examines the major speeches of Kennedy’s presidency, from his famed but controversial inaugural address to his belated but powerful demand for civil rights. It argues that his eloquence flowed from his capacity to imagine anew the American liberal tradition—Kennedy insisted on the intrinsic moral worth of each person, and his language sought to make that ideal real in public life. This book focuses on that language and argues that presidential words matter. Kennedy’s legacy rests in no small part on his rhetoric, and here Murphy maintains that Kennedy’s words made him a most consequential president. By grounding the study of these speeches both in the texts themselves and in their broader linguistic and historical contexts, the book draws a new portrait of President Kennedy, one that not only recognizes his rhetorical artistry but also places him in the midst of public debates with antagonists and allies, including Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Richard Russell, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Ultimately this book demonstrates how Kennedy’s liberal persuasion defined the era in which he lived and offers a powerful model for Americans today.

Under Pressure

Under Pressure
Author: Jen Schneider
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137533153

This book examines five rhetorical strategies used by the US coal industry to advance its interests in the face of growing economic and environmental pressures: industrial apocalyptic, corporate ventriloquism, technological shell game, hypocrite’s trap, and energy utopia. The authors argue that these strategies appeal to and reinforce neoliberalism, a discourse and set of practices that privilege market rationality and individual freedom and responsibility above all else. As the coal industry has become the leading target and leverage point for those seeking more aggressive action to mitigate climate change, their corporate advocacy may foreshadow rhetorical strategies available to other fossil fuel industries as they manage similar economic and cultural shifts. The authors’ analysis of coal’s corporate advocacy also identifies contradictions and points of vulnerability in the organized resistance to climate action as well as the larger ideological formation of neoliberalism.

Rhetoric’s Pragmatism

Rhetoric’s Pragmatism
Author: Steven Mailloux
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2017-05-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0271079991

For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview. Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication. A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux’s arguments enlightening and essential.

The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power

The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power
Author: Nathan Crick
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2024-10-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1040130100

This handbook represents the first comprehensive disciplinary investigation into the relationship between rhetoric and power as it is expressed in different aspects of society. Providing conceptual and empirical foundations for the study of the relationship between different forms of rhetorical expression and diverse structures, practices, habits, and networks of power, The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power is divided into six parts: Theoretical Foundations Propaganda, Politics, and the State Resistance and Social Movements Culture, Society, and Identity Discourses of Technique and Organization Prospects for the Future The guiding principle of this handbook is that power represents a capacity for coordinated action grounded in specific historical, technological, political, and economic conditions. It suggests that rhetoric is an art that adapts to these conditions and finds ways to transform, create, or undermine these capacities in other people through self-conscious persuasion. Featuring contributions from key scholars, this accessibly written handbook will be an indispensable resource for researchers and students in the fields of rhetoric, writing studies, communication studies, political communication, and social justice.

The Rhetoric of White Slavery and the Making of National Identity

The Rhetoric of White Slavery and the Making of National Identity
Author: Leslie J Harris
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2023-07-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1609177339

At the turn of the twentieth century, the white slavery panic pervaded American politics, influencing the creation of the FBI, the enactment of immigration law, and the content of international treaties. At the core of this controversy was the maintenance of white national space. In this comprehensive account of the Progressive Era’s sex trafficking rhetoric, Leslie Harris demonstrates the centrality of white womanhood, as a symbolic construct, to the structure of national space and belonging. Introducing the framework of the mobile imagination to read across different scales of the controversy—ranging from local to transnational—she establishes how the imaginative possibilities of mobility within public controversy work to constitute belonging in national space.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass
Author: Gregory P. Lampe
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0870139339

This work in the MSU Press Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series chronicles Frederick Douglass's preparation for a career in oratory, his emergence as an abolitionist lecturer in 1841, and his development and activities as a public speaker and reformer from 1841 to 1845. Lampe's meticulous scholarship overturns much of the conventional wisdom about this phase of Douglass's life and career uncovering new information about his experiences as a slave and as a fugitive; it provokes a deeper and richer understanding of this renowned orator's emergence as an important voice in the crusade to end slavery. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Douglass was well prepared to become a full-time lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1841. His emergence as an eloquent voice from slavery was not as miraculous as scholars have led us to believe. Lampe begins by tracing Douglass's life as slave in Maryland and as fugitive in New Bedford, showing that experiences gained at this time in his life contributed powerfully to his understanding of rhetoric and to his development as an orator. An examination of his daily oratorical activities from the time of his emergence in Nantucket in 1841 until his departure for England in 1845 dispels many conventional beliefs surrounding this period, especially the belief that Douglass was under the wing of William Lloyd Garrison. Lampe's research shows that Douglass was much more outspoken and independent than previously thought and that at times he was in conflict with white abolitionists. Included in this work is a complete itinerary of Douglass's oratorical activities, correcting errors and omissions in previously published works, as well as two newly discovered complete speech texts, never before published.

Rhetoric and Public Memory in the Science of Disaster

Rhetoric and Public Memory in the Science of Disaster
Author: Jeremy R. Grossman
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2024-06-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1666938947

Rhetoric and Public Memory in the Science of Disaster grapples with the role of science in the public memory of natural disasters. Taking a psychoanalytic and genealogical approach to the rhetoric of disaster science throughout the twentieth century, this book explores how we remember natural disasters by analyzing how we try to prevent them. Chapters track the development of predictive modeling methods alongside some of the worst and most consequential natural disasters in the history of the United States. From miniaturized physical scale models, to cartographic renderings within a burgeoning statistical science, to ever more complex simulation scenarios, disaster science has long created imaginary versions of horrific events in the effort to prevent them. Through an exploration of these hypothetical disasters, this book theorizes how science itself becomes a site of public memory, an increasingly important question in a world of changing weather.

Caught on Tape

Caught on Tape
Author: Kelly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2023-05-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 019767786X

In a surveillance culture, the ubiquity of audio-visual recording devices has enabled the unprecedented documentation of private indiscretions, scandalous conversations, and obscene behaviors performed by both ordinary and high-profile people. From former President Donald J. Trump's lewd banter on the infamous Access Hollywood video and leaked audio of celebrity racist tirades to outburst of violent hate speech posted daily to YouTube, contemporary media culture is awash in obscene performances of transgressive white masculinity. Such exposés are screened and viewed under the assumption that revealing secret prejudices will necessarily realize the promises of democracy and bring about a postracial and postfeminist future. This book addresses why the culture of public revelations has failed to hold the perpetrators accountable. Caught on Tape illustrates how public revelations constitute a symbolic and imaginary world for the public that is preoccupied with the obscene enjoyment of transgressive white masculinity: a compulsively repetitive experience of ecstatic and excessive pleasure-in-pain that arises from encounters with that which disturbs, traumatizes, and interrupts illusory notions of our coherent selves and reality. Caught on Tape argues that addressing race and gender inequality with the promise of scandalous hot mics and obscene private videos transforms antiracism and gender justice into disempowering forms of spectatorship that ultimately conceal the structural nature of whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The central argument of this book is that the spectators are the ones really caught on tape.