Reading the Reparations Debate

This essay examines the ways in which the rhetoric of the reparations debate elucidates the varying accounts of history favored by Americans of different backgrounds, the political and ideological foundations underlying different perspectives on the nature and uses of history, and the norms guiding public deliberation in the contemporary U.S. about how to remember the past. Because the controversy explicitly connects questions about race and cultural memory, it has generated positions that seem irresolvable; yet, ironically, the debate suggests ways in which rhetoric about race in the U.S. might begin to move beyond current impasses.     

Clinton and Vietnam: A case for amnestic rhetoric

Bill Clinton's 1993 Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Wall is an example of amnestic rhetoric, which seeks to discourage public debate and to diminish public memory. In this essay I argue that Clinton's epideictic discourse camouflages an act of apologia in which he defends his controversial opposition to the Vietnam War. Second, I argue that Clinton simultaneously directs his audience's attention away from the past and toward the future, urging them to remember the buried, but to bury the memory of Vietnam. Third, I argue that the speech culminates with an act of rhetorical investiture for Clinton as commander in chief. Finally, I propose the concept of amnestic rhetoric as an addition to public memory scholarship.     

Fantasm: The triumph of form (an essay on the democratic sublime)

This essay attempts to counter the dreariness of postmodern critique and culture by locating the vital force of phantasy, rhetoric, argument, hope, and memory in contemporary public affairs. More particularly, it engages recent controversies about collective memory and the FDR memorial statue especially to generate a greater sensitivity to the fact that we are agents (and not just dupes) of history. The body, symbolic and material, is a core site for the history, theory, and practice of democracy, I argue, and is the hard kernel of collective identification and division. Methodologically, the essay fuses Aristotle and Lacan's ideas about phantasy as a perceptual device, which gages and creates public and personal desire, as an analytic frame for the study of public discourse.     

Collective memory,political nostalgia,and the rhetorical presidency: Bill Clinton's commemoration of the March on Washington,August 28, 1998

This essay offers a reading of President Bill Clinton's address on August 28, 1998 in which he commemorates the 35th anniversary of the March on Washington. Specifically, Clinton's August 28th address reveals how the presidency has become a hermeneutic site for the formation of collective memory and political nostalgia. This analysis discusses the uses of political nostalgia for the purposes of political image (re)construction as evidenced by Clinton's exploitation of the civil rights movement to explain and excuse his personal failings and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We also present a divergent version of Clinton's rhetoric, giving specific attention to how his particular use of nostalgia in this address works to articulate and confront many of the powerful dichotomies (masculine/feminine; war/peace; black/white; private/public) that define his presidency, his public persona, and the larger political culture in postmodern America.     

Pentadic cartography: Mapping the universe of discourse

Expressions of time have increasingly infused the rhetorical experience of post-industrial war, especially since 9/11. This essay demonstrates how these “signs of time” operate as one of three tropes: deadline/countdown, infinite/infinitesimal war, and the ticking clock. The persistence of such signs of time in public discourse can be seen as an expression of what Paul Virilio has called the “chronopolis,” a political universe textured by real-time communication technologies. The chronopolitical will exhibits certain autocratic traits at odds with democratic ideals, primarily the refashioning of citizen identity into that of the “contemporary.” The analysis here charts the autocratic rhetoric of the chronopolis as a critical democratic project.     

ABSTRACTS

Plato on Political Rhetoric Generally, Plato was regarded as being hostile to rhetoric. However, I will show that in Plato＇s some important political dialogues he still verifies the significance of rhetoric or persuasion. Then, I list the attacks of Plato on his contemporary rhetoric, which is called in the essay as ＂politician rhetoric＂. On the other hand, Plato also articu- lates the characteristics of true rlhetoric, which I name as ＂dialectical rhetoric. ＂ In order to elaborate ＂dialectical rhetoric＂, I take Pericles as an example to show how the dialectic rhetoric could work in the real political world. Finally, I point out that dialectical rhetoric still can give some reflection for today＇s political rhetoric. It contains the ideal of the good, caring the soul of the audience, speaking the truth, insisting the right thing with reason, etc.     

Remembering “A Great Fag”: Visualizing Public Memory and the Construction of Queer Space

This essay examines how public memory is visualized in the statue to Canada's “gay pioneer,” Alexander Wood. By analyzing three viewing positions of the statue—the official democratic memory, traditionalist countermemory, and camp countermemory—I argue each position enacts a distinct form of remembering Wood with implications for both materializing queer memories and how space and identity are understood in the city. Based upon these visualizations, I extend arguments for how rhetoricians critique memory texts and contribute to defining “queer public memory” in light of this statue.     

Tales of a Texas Cynic: Theodore O. Windt Remembered

In memory of Professor Ted Windt, this essay considers his significant contributions to rhetorical scholarship and pedagogy. It examines his unique contributions to our understandings of American presidential and protest rhetoric of the late 20th century, highlighting his application of Greek cynicism as explanatory schema for American protest rhetoric and then recounting Windt's framework for analyzing “crisis” rhetoric as appropriated by recent American presidents to advance their agendas. The essay then considers Windt's pedagogical perspectives and argues that Windt's teaching itself was acclaimed because it was rooted in the rhetorical and oratorical excellence. In conclusion, it is argued that Ted Windt was a unique and important rhetorical scholar and critic whose life and work provide lasting scholarly contributions and a robust model for achieving excellence in the college classroom.     

Trashing the System: Social Movement,Intersectional Rhetoric,and Collective Agency in the Young Lords Organization's Garbage Offensive

Examining the nascent rhetoric of the Young Lords Organization's (YLO) 1969 “garbage offensive,” this essay argues that the long-standing constraints on agency to which they were responding demanded an inventive rhetoric that was decolonizing both in its aim and in its form. Blending diverse forms of discourse produced an intersectional rhetoric that was qualitatively different from other movements at the time. As such, the YLO constructed a collective agency challenging the status quo and, in some ways, foreshadowed more contemporary movement discourses that similarly function intersectionally. Examining the YLO's garbage offensive, then, presents rhetorical scholars with an opportunity to revise our understanding of how marginalized groups craft power through rhetoric.     

Edifying Youths. The Chambers of Rhetoric in Seventeenth-Century Holland

For the early modern period, historians have primarily looked at institutional forms of education when investigating the intellectual molding of youths. With the exception of the wealthy, their conclusions have often been one-sided. However, youths of the middling sort in the Dutch Republic were more resourceful. Youths that could not afford a formal education at a Latin school or a university resorted to alternative resources such as chambers of rhetoric. For historians of education, chambers of rhetoric are not an obvious terrain to excavate. Traditionally, the chambers have been studied for their public literary and theatrical activities. However, those incidental public performances were only a fraction of what took place in private. In this essay we will probe into the literary activities of the chambers' private weekly meetings and illustrate how the Dutch chambers of rhetoric in the seventeenth century played an important role in edifying youths from the middling sort into a cultural elite.     

“Second Line to Bury White Supremacy”: Take 'Em Down Nola,monument removal,and residual memory

ABSTRACT

As Lost Cause statues come down across the country, communities are forced to reckon with monumental absences. While the rhetorical significance of monuments is well-established in scholarly literature, the rhetoric of monumental absence is not as thoroughly covered. To better understand the role that monumental absence plays in both public space and civic life, this essay theorizes residual memory as the remaining rhetorical potency that clings to a commemorative site after the focal object or structure of memorialization is removed. To demonstrate the theoretical utility of residual memory and contribute to ongoing public debates about Lost Cause monuments, this essay uses rhetorical field methods to conduct a rhetorical analysis of Take 'Em Down NOLA's “Second Line to Bury White Supremacy.” The secretive night time removal of the Liberty Place Monument in New Orleans on April 24, 2017 and the activist celebration that followed two weeks later provide an exemplary case for exploring how residual memories can be used to resist and revise regressive practices of public memory.     

浅论肯尼思·伯克的现代修辞哲学

伯克的修辞哲学在美国以及全世界产生了极大影响。通过对语言和哲学的探索,他为修辞学增添了一个新的视野,因而他的修辞思想被誉为一种“新”修辞学。本文主要简述了新旧修辞学的关系,并阐述了他的几种主要修辞哲学思想,即社会活动中所固有的等级性、分歧性、认同性、抽象性、否定性及动机性,从而有助于深刻地认识“修辞的无所不在性”的哲学主题。     

巴赫金对话理论的修辞学研究

巴赫金(M.M.Bakhtin)学术思想的核心和精髓是对话理论,其主旨在于强调一种积极的、崇尚个性、注重平等参与的人文精神,对话思想贯穿于他的语言学和符号学思想。虽然巴赫金不是修辞学家,但他有关修辞学的陈述都倡导将修辞学解释为对话,从而确认了话语的各种形式。巴赫金的对话概念极大地发展和丰富了修辞学传统,由此而形成的对话修辞学将巴赫金作品中和现代文化理论中所形成的新的概念应用于修辞学传统,给传统修辞学注入了新的活力。巴赫金的对话修辞学是一种检测我们与他人的观点以及检测我们自身的手段,尤其是对我们个体的和文化的差异的一种检测。从修辞学的视角来探讨巴赫金的对话理论,有助于对其理论能进一步加以审视和理解。     

“The Effort of Reason,and the Adventure of Beauty”: The Aesthetic Rhetoric of Randolph Bourne

We are still coming to terms with the legacy of Randolph Bourne. Although he died at the age of 32 just as the United States was cheerfully entering the First World War under the banner of “democracy,” the words he penned in an unfinished essay still resonate in the American social conscience: “War is the Health of the State.” This maxim, once thought the exclusive property of leftist radicals, now can be heard echoing from every political corner of the blogosphere as progressives and libertarians alike find cause to question the motives of governmental power. Yet despite his reappearance as a symbol, Bourne in many ways remains as forgotten as ever—perhaps even more so as his once provocative claim has been transformed into a talking point. This essay endeavors to recapture the voice of Bourne in all its complexity, seeking to place him at the forefront of the contemporary American intellectual tradition as one of its most piercing critics, most visionary poets, and most eloquent rhetors. Specifically, we show how Bourne's critique of the “State” foresaw the rise of the technological society organized by ideological propaganda, how his vision of the Beloved Community anticipated our modern ideals of global transnationalism, and how his literary essays practiced a form of aesthetic rhetoric which employed dramatistic methods to bring about a new state of expanded social consciousness.     

The Ideology of the American Dream: Two Competing Philosophies in Education, 1776-2006

This article puts forth 2 competing notions of the American Dream, 1 radical and 1 conservative (both put forth by Thomas Jefferson), as the basis for 2 competing public philosophies of American democracy and education. This article traces out the ecology of inequality that has determined the context of these 2 competing public philosophies, especially in relation to the evolution of U.S. education. The ideology of the American Dream is still a potent philosophical means for constructing reformist discourses for American politics and education. The rhetoric of the American Dream focuses on the unrealized promises found within the Declaration of Independence and it articulates the need of equality and freedom for all members of our society. This article traces the framework of these conflicting American Dreams from their inception and into our contemporary context.     

Listening to the Logos: Speech and the Coming of Wisdom in Ancient Greece

This essay examines accounts of visits to Civil War prison sites, cemeteries, and battlefields that were generated by the popular speaker Anna E. Dickinson during an 1875 lecture tour of Southern states. An ardent Unionist, Dickinson visited places that she believed to exemplify Union sacrifice and Confederate wrongdoing. We analyze her accounts—captured in letters to her mother—in order to understand how this rhetorically skilled public figure used these visits as opportunities for invention and interpretation, generating textual responses oriented toward public memory-making. We argue that her letters enact what we call a pilgrim-critic persona, which both demonstrates an affective connection to places and undertakes a critical investigation of what happened there. Employing the concept of the pilgrim-critic enables this analysis to contribute to rhetorical studies of public memory by highlighting the inventional resources used when visitors interpret their experiences of memory places.     

“Acting as Freemen”: Rhetoric,Race, and Reform in the Debate over Colonization in Freedom's Journal, 1827–1828

This essay features a debate in Freedom's Journal, the first African-American newspaper, in 1827 and 1828, concerning the proposals of the American Colonization Society. Arguments favoring colonization illuminate the ways in which whiteness informs and constrains the discourse of white self-professed reformers about race, nation, and public rhetoric. As constitutive rhetoric, the anti-colonization arguments of contributors to Freedom's Journal construct African Americans as agents, citizens, and empowered public rhetors. The exchange reveals key, often hidden aspects of the discourses of whites and of people of color about race and reform in the antebellum period and in the contemporary public sphere.     

Anger Among Allies: Audre Lorde's 1981 Keynote Admonishing the National Women's Studies Association

This essay argues that Audre Lorde's 1981 keynote speech, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” has much to contribute to communication scholars’ understanding of human biases and rhetorical artistry. The significance of Lorde's subject is one reason for devoting critical attention to her speech, because, in contemporary public life in the United States, anger has abiding relevance in an extraordinary range of rhetoric and public address. Another reason for contemplating Lorde's speech is the fact that anger was a major theme throughout the internationally acclaimed poet-activist's advocacy. The essay suggests that Lorde's speech illustrates a communication technique, shifting subjectivities, which recurs in her rhetorical artistry.     

Choosing 'stereotypes': debating the efficacy of (British) disability-criticism

This paper considers how, by paying attention to the divergent use of 'stereotypes' as a methodological tool, we concomitantly pay attention to the capacities of contemporary disability-criticism. First, the search for negative stereotypes is described in terms of how it enables the repeated citation of common examples. However, as some areas of disability-criticism have begun to acknowledge that 'stereotypes' are not exclusively a negative form, the second part of the paper uses the US cartoon series South Park to explore what sort of interpretations such a troublesome recognition allows. While critical discourse on disability is discussed as a whole, the ultimate aim is to draw some conclusions about the past, present and future of British disability-criticism. The paper concludes by suggesting that recognising the contingency of where we are on how we choose to read representations of disability strengthens debates about how we want to go on.     

Teaching Text Design

A growing body of literature defines a rhetoric of visible text based on page layout, typography, and the various design features afforded by page composition tools buitt into word processors and page design programs. Little has been written, however, about what a wriier needs to know about design and in what order. This article describes and demonstrates a scope and sequence of learning that encourages writers to develop their skills as text designers. It introduces relevant liierature that is helpful for such learning and it does so in an evolving format that displays visually what the essay discusses verbally.