Download or read book The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy written by Scott Welsh and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizens, political theorists, and politicians alike insist that political or partisan motives get in the way of real democracy. Real democracy, we are convinced, is embodied by an ability to form collective judgments in the interest of the whole. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy: How Deliberative Ideals Undermine Democratic Politics, by Scott Welsh, argues instead that it is our easy rejection of political motives, individual interests, and the rhetorical pursuit of power that poses the greatest danger to democracy. Our rejection of politics understood as a rhetorical contest for power is dangerous because democracy ultimately rests upon the perceived public legitimacy of public, political challenges to authority and the subsequent reconstitution of authority amid the impossibility of collective judgment. Hence, rather than searching for allegedly more authentic democracy, rooted in the pursuit of ever-illusive collective judgments, we must find ways to come to terms with the persistence of rhetorical, political contests for power as the essence of democracy itself. Welsh argues that the impossibility of any kind of public judgment is the fact that democracy must face. Given the impossibility of public judgment, rhetorical competitions for political power are not merely poor substitutes for an allegedly more authentic democratic practice, but constitute the essence of democracy itself. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy is an iconoclastic investigation of the democratic process and public discourse.

Download or read book Democracy s Lot written by Candice Rai and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the communication strategies of various constituencies in a Chicago neighborhood, offering insights into the challenges that beset diverse urban populations and demonstrating persuasively rhetoric’s power to illuminate and resolve charged conflicts Candice Rai’s Democracy’s Lot is an incisive exploration of the limitations and possibilities of democratic discourse for resolving conflicts in urban communities. Rai roots her study of democratic politics and publics in a range of urban case studies focused on public art, community policing, and urban development. These studies examine the issues that erupted within an ethnically and economically diverse Chicago neighborhood over conflicting visions for a vacant lot called Wilson Yard. Tracing how residents with disparate agendas organized factions and deployed language, symbols, and other rhetorical devices in the struggle over Wilson Yard’s redevelopment and other contested public spaces, Rai demonstrates that rhetoric is not solely a tool of elite communicators, but rather a framework for understanding the agile communication strategies that are improvised in the rough-and-tumble work of democratic life. Wilson Yard, a lot eight blocks north of Wrigley Field in Chicago’s gentrifying Uptown neighborhood, is a diverse enclave of residents enlivened by recent immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. The neighborhood’s North Broadway Street witnesses a daily multilingual hubbub of people from a wide spectrum of income levels, religions, sexual identifications, and interest groups. When a fire left the lot vacant, this divided community projected on Wilson Yard disparate and conflicting aspirations, the resolution of which not only determined the fate of this particular urban space, but also revealed the lot of democracy itself as a process of complex problem-solving. Rai’s detailed study of one block in an iconic American city brings into vivid focus the remarkable challenges that beset democratic urban populations anywhere on the globe—and how rhetoric supplies a framework to understand and resolve those challenges. Based on exhaustive field work, Rai uses rhetorical ethnography to study competing publics, citizenship, and rhetoric in action, exploring “rhetorical invention,” the discovery or development by individuals of the resources or methods of engaging with and persuading others. She builds a case for democratic processes and behaviors based not on reflexive idealism but rather on the hard work and practice of democracy, which must address apathy, passion, conflict, and ambivalence.

Download or read book Talking Democracy written by Benedetto Fontana and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2004-09-10 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their efforts to uncover the principles of a robust conception of democracy, theorists of deliberative democracy place a premium on the role of political expression—public speech and reasoned debate—as the key to democratic processes. They also frequently hark back to historical antecedents (as in the Habermasian invocation of the “public sphere” of eighteenth-century bourgeois society and the Arendtian valorization of the classical Athenian polis) in their quest to establish that deliberative procedures are more than “merely theoretical” and instead have a practical application. But for all this emphasis on the discursive and historical dimensions of democracy, these theorists have generally neglected the rich resources available in the history of rhetorical theory and practice. It is the purpose of Talking Democracy to resurrect this history and show how attention to rhetoric can help lead to a better understanding of both the strengths and limitations of current theories of deliberative democracy. Contributors, besides the editors, are Russell Bentley, Tsae Lan Lee Dow, Tom Murphy, Arlene Saxonhouse, Gary Shiffman, John Uhr, Nadia Urbinati, John von Heyking, and Douglas Walton.

Download or read book Saving Persuasion written by Bryan Garsten and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today's increasingly polarized political landscape it seems that fewer and fewer citizens hold out hope of persuading one another. Even among those who have not given up on persuasion, few will admit to practicing the art of persuasion known as rhetoric. To describe political speech as "rhetoric" today is to accuse it of being superficial or manipulative. In Saving Persuasion, Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of this suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory. Revealing how deeply concerns about rhetorical speech shaped both ancient and modern political thought, he argues that the artful practice of persuasion ought to be viewed as a crucial part of democratic politics. He provocatively suggests that the aspects of rhetoric that seem most dangerous--the appeals to emotion, religious values, and the concrete commitments and identities of particular communities--are also those which can draw out citizens' capacity for good judgment. Against theorists who advocate a rationalized ideal of deliberation aimed at consensus, Garsten argues that a controversial politics of partiality and passion can produce a more engaged and more deliberative kind of democratic discourse.

Download or read book Democracy as Fetish written by Ralph Cintron and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy has long been fetishized. Consequently, how we speak about democracy and what we expect from democratic governance are at odds with practice. With unflinching resolve, this book probes the theory of democracy and how the left and right are fascinated by it. In this innovative multidisciplinary study, Ralph Cintron provides sustained analysis of our political discourse. He shows not only how the rhetoric of democracy produces strong desires for social order, global wealth, and justice but also how these desires cannot be satisfied. Throughout his discussion, Cintron includes ethnographic research from fieldwork conducted over the course of twenty years in the Latino neighborhoods of Chicago, where he observes both citizens and the undocumented looking to democracy to fulfill their highest aspirations. Politicians hand out favors to the elite, developers strong-arm aldermen, and the disenfranchised have little redress. The problem, Cintron argues, is that the conditions required to put democracy into practice—territory, a bordered nation-state, citizens, property—are constituted by inequality and violence, because there is no inclusivity that does not also exclude. Drawing on ethnography, economics, political theory, and rhetorical analysis, Cintron makes his case with tremendous analytic rigor. This challenge to reassess the discourses on democracy and to consider democratic politics as always compromised by oligarchy will be of particular interest to political and rhetorical theorists.

Download or read book Social Fragmentation and the Decline of American Democracy written by Robert E. Denton, Jr. and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the social and political implications of what the authors identify as the decline of the social contract in America and the rise of a citizenry that has become self-centered, entitled, and independent. For nearly two decades, America has been in a “cultural war” over moral values and social issues, becoming a divided nation geographically, politically, socially, and morally. We are witnessing the decline of American Democracy, the authors argue, resulting from the erosion of the idea of the social contract. Especially since the “baby boomers,” each successive generation has emphasized personal license to the exclusion of service, social integration, and the common good. With the social contact, the larger general will becomes the means of establishing reciprocal rights and duties, privileges, and responsibilities as a basis of the state. The balkanization of America has changed the role of government from one of oversight to one of dependency, where individual freedom and responsibility are sacrificed for group equality. This book examines the conditions of this social fragmentation, and offers ideas of an American Renaissance predicated on communicative idealism.

Download or read book Pragmatism Democracy and the Necessity of Rhetoric written by Robert Danisch and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Robert Danisch examines the search by America's first generation of pragmatists for a unique set of rhetorics that would serve the needs of a developing democracy. Digging deep into pragmatism's historical development, Danisch sheds light on its association with an alternative but significant and often overlooked tradition. He draws parallels between the rhetorics of such American pragmatists as John Dewey and Jane Addams and those of the ancient Greek tradition. Danisch contends that, while building upon a classical foundation, pragmatism sought to determine rhetorical responses to contemporary irresolutions. rhetoric, including pragmatism's rejection of philosophy with its traditional assumptions and practices. Grounding his argument on an

Download or read book What Democracy Looks Like written by Christina R. Foust and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling and timely collection that combines two distinct but related theories in rhetoric and communication studies

Download or read book The Rhetorical Pursuit of Political Advantage written by Scott Michael Welsh and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation explores the relationship between rhetoric and democracy. More specifically, it examines the theoretical demeaning of the rhetorical pursuit of political advantage that pervades normative theories of public deliberation in democracy, including both liberal and discourse theories. The main argument of the dissertation is that such theories wrongly oppose the idea of authentically democratic speech to strategic, tactical, or rhetorical modes of address. In contrast with the aversion to rhetoric found in normative theories of public deliberation, particularly those variously inspired by John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, I advance an argument for an essential and productive relationship between rhetoric and democracy as suggested by Kenneth Burke and Michel de Certeau. Since currently marginalized citizens must, by necessity, deploy hegemonic discourses strategically in pursuit of a measure of political power or representation, theories of public deliberation in democracy that deny the general democratic legitimacy of the rhetorical pursuit of political advantage ideologically undermine democratic challengers. Instead of encouraging citizens to seriously attend to, and value, the essential democratic struggle for political advantage, prominent theories of public deliberation in democracy denigrate it. While the rhetorical pursuit of political advantage is susceptible to anti-democratic excesses, particularly of the sort that jeopardize peaceful association and truthful politics, theorists and citizens should not imagine an end to such excesses in visions of understanding or justification-oriented communication, but should look instead to effective counter-rhetorics. Peaceful association and epistemically accountable political speech should be regarded as situated, rhetorical-political achievements against the aims of the militant and the deceptive. Hence, this dissertation recommends that, rather than opposing democracy to rhetorical politics, citizens and theorists alike should recognize democracy in the broad proliferation of an effective ability, among diversely motivated people and groups, to win a share of political power rhetorically.

Download or read book Political Vocabularies written by Mary E. Stuckey and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Vocabularies: FDR, the Clergy Letters, and the Elements of Political Argument uses a set of letters sent to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 by American clergymen to make a larger argument about the rhetorical processes of our national politics. At any given moment, national politics are constituted by competing political imaginaries, through which citizens understand and participate in politics. Different imaginaries locate political authority in different places, and so political authority is very much a site of dispute between differing political vocabularies. Opposing political vocabularies are grounded in opposing characterizations of the specific political moment, its central issues, and its citizens, for we cannot imagine a political community without populating it and giving it purpose. These issues and people are hierarchically ordered, which provides the imaginary with a sense of internal cohesion and which also is a central point of disputation between competing vocabularies in a specific epoch. Each vocabulary is grounded in a political tradition, read through our national myths, which authorize the visions of national identity and purpose and which contain significant deliberative aspects, for each vision of the nation impels distinct political imperatives. Such imaginaries are our political priorities in action. Taking one specific moment of political change, the author illuminates the larger processes of change, competition, and stability in national politics.

Download or read book The Problematic Public written by Kristian Bjørkdahl and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost one hundred years have passed since Walter Lippmann and John Dewey published their famous reflections on the “problems of the public,” but their thoughts remain surprisingly relevant as resources for thinking through our current crisis-plagued predicament. This book takes stock of the reception history of Lippmann’s and Dewey’s ideas about publics, communication, and political decision-making and shows how their ideas can inspire a way forward. Lippmann and Dewey were only two of many twentieth-century thinkers trying to imagine how a modern industrial democracy might (or might not) come to pass, but despite that, the “Lippmann/Dewey debate” became a symbol of the two alleged options: an epistocracy, on the one hand, and grassroots participation, on the other. In this book, distinguished scholars from rhetoric, communication, sociology, and media and journalism studies reconsider this debate in order to assess its contemporary relevance for our time, which, in some respects, bears a striking resemblance to the 1920s. In this way, the book explains how and why Lippmann and Dewey are indispensable resources for anyone concerned with the future of democratic deliberation and decision-making. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Nathan Crick, Robert Danisch, Steve Fuller, William Keith, Bruno Latour, John Durham Peters, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Michael Schudson, Anna Shechtman, Slavko Splichal, Lisa S. Villadsen, and Scott Welsh.

Download or read book The Paradox of Democracy written by Zac Gershberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking history of communications that challenges ideas about freedom of speech and democracy. At the heart of democracy lies a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies since their advent: Though freedom of speech and media has always been a necessary condition of democracy, that very freedom is also its greatest threat. When new forms of communication arrive, they often bolster the practices of democratic politics. But the more accessible the media of a society, the more susceptible that society is to demagoguery, distraction, and spectacle. Tracing the history of media disruption and the various responses to it over time, Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing reveal how these changes have challenged democracy—often with unsettling effects. The Paradox of Democracy captures the deep connection between communication and political culture, from the ancient art of rhetoric and the revolutionary role of newspapers to liberal broadcast media and the toxic misinformation of the digital public sphere. With clear-eyed analysis, Gershberg and Illing show that our contemporary debates over media, populism, and cancel culture are not too different from the democratic cultural experiences of the past. As we grapple with a fast-changing, hyper-digital world, they prove democracy is always perched precipitously on a razor’s edge, now as ever before.

Download or read book Demagogue for President written by Jennifer Mercieca and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Bronze, 2020 Foreword Indies, Political and Social Sciences Winner, 2021 PROSE Award for Government & Politics "Deserves a place alongside George Orwell’s 'Politics and the English Language'. . . . one of the most important political books of this perilous summer."—The Washington Post "A must-read"—Salon "Highly recommended"—Jack Shafer, Politico Featured in "The Best New Books to Read This Summer" and "Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2020"—Literary Hub Historic levels of polarization, a disaffected and frustrated electorate, and widespread distrust of government, the news media, and traditional political leadership set the stage in 2016 for an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented presidential contest. Donald Trump’s campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As Demagogue for President shows, Trump’s campaign strategy was anything but simple. Political communication expert Jennifer Mercieca shows how the Trump campaign expertly used the common rhetorical techniques of a demagogue, a word with two contradictory definitions—“a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power” or “a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times” (Merriam-Webster, 2019). These strategies, in conjunction with post-rhetorical public relations techniques, were meant to appeal to a segment of an already distrustful electorate. It was an effective tactic. Mercieca analyzes rhetorical strategies such as argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum, reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to American exceptionalism. By all accounts, it fundamentally changed the discourse of the American public sphere.

Download or read book Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy written by Gae Lyn Henderson and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of propaganda’s uses in modern democracy highlights important theoretical questions about normative rhetorical practices. Is rhetoric ethically neutral? Is propaganda? How can facticity, accuracy, and truth be determined? Do any circumstances justify misrepresentation? Edited by Gae Lyn Henderson and M. J. Braun, Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy: History, Theory, Analysis advances our understanding of propaganda and rhetoric. Essays focus on historical figures—Edward Bernays, Jane Addams, Kenneth Burke, and Elizabeth Bowen—examining the development of the theory of propaganda during the rise of industrialism and the later changes of a mass-mediated society. Modeling a variety of approaches, case studies in the book consider contemporary propaganda and analyze the means and methods of propaganda production and distribution, including broadcast news, rumor production and globalized multimedia, political party manifestos, and university public relations. Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy offers new perspectives on the history of propaganda, explores how it has evolved during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and advances a much more nuanced understanding of what it means to call discourse propaganda.

Download or read book Rhetoric and Democracy in a Post Truth Era written by Joshua J. Frye and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a timely examination of communication and contemporary political culture in the United States and the specific forces, factors, and dynamics that have contributed to increasing democratic dysfunction and violence. Informed by their novel theoretical bridging to analyze four key vectors in the interplay of complex social systems – (1) post-truth; (2) polarization; (3) [social media] platform; and (4) populism – Joshua J. Frye and Steven R. Goldzwig examine the cultural norms, traditions, and trajectories of public communication and citizen practices to interrogate both how we got to this point and how we can fix it. Exploring salient and increasingly important issues affecting the public life and culture of American democracy and democratic movements worldwide, this work expands public understanding of the current political landscape, of what effective democratic citizenship requires, and of communication practices that can be used to better engage with these contemporary challenges. Scholars of communication, rhetoric, and political science will find this book of particular interest.

Download or read book Homeless Advocacy and the Rhetorical Construction of the Civic Home written by Melanie Loehwing and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homeless assistance has frequently adhered to the “three hots and a cot” model, which prioritizes immediate material needs but may fail to address the political and social exclusion of people experiencing homelessness. In this study, Loehwing reconsiders typical characterizations of homelessness, citizenship, and democratic community through unconventional approaches to homeless advocacy and assistance. While conventional homeless advocacy rhetoric establishes the urgency of homeless suffering, it also implicitly invites housed publics to understand homelessness as a state of abnormality that destines the individuals suffering it to life outside the civic body. In contrast, Loehwing focuses on atypical models of homeless advocacy: the meal-sharing initiatives of Food Not Bombs, the international competition of the Homeless World Cup, and the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day campaign. She argues that these modes of unconventional homeless advocacy provide rhetorical exemplars of a type of inclusive and empowering civic discourse that is missing from conventional homeless advocacy and may be indispensable for overcoming homeless marginalization and exclusion in contemporary democratic culture. Loehwing’s interrogation of homeless advocacy rhetorics demonstrates how discursive practices shape democratic culture and how they may provide a potential civic remedy to the harms of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and displacement. This book will be welcomed by scholars whose work focuses on the intersections of democratic theory and rhetorical and civic studies, as well as by homelessness advocacy groups.

Download or read book Unlearning the Soviet Tongue written by Natalia Kovalyova and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-09-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do countries democratize? What route does the way out of totalitarianism take? Students of Russian politics have pursued answers to these questions by surveying Russians on a variety of attitudes, beliefs, norms, and practices. This bookattends to political discourse to demonstrate how it creates and constraints political opportunities. Itexaminesan important period of Russian political history: from Boris Yeltsin’s second presidential election in 1996, when democracy was pronounced victorious, through its gradual slide toward authoritarian practices during Vladimir Putin’s initial two terms in office, and to the election of his protégé Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. This analysis challenges the assertions ofRussian democracy as doomed by the governing rationalities of the elites. Likewise, it refutesthe notion of Russians as an apathetic nation in chronic need of a “strong hand.” It argues that if we are to understand how Russia lives, how it endures, and how it can change, we need to pay attention to the discourses that shape Russian political identities and the nation’s political future.