Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates
Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates

Author: Catherine Chaput

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2019-08-14

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1611179955

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What explains the "triumph of capitalism"? Why do people so often respond positively to discussions favoring it while shutting down arguments against it? Overwhelmingly theories regarding capitalism's resilience have focused on individual choice bolstered by careful rhetorical argumentation. In this penetrating study, however, Catherine Chaput shows that something more than choice is at work in capitalism's ability to thrive in public practice and imagination—more even than material resources (power) and cultural imperialism (ideology). That "something," she contends, is market affect. Affect, says Chaput, signifies a semi-autonomous entity circulating through individuals and groups. Physiological in nature but moving across cultural, material, and environmental boundaries, affect has three functions: it opens or closes individual receptivity; it pulls or pushes individual identification; and it raises or lowers individual energies. This novel approach begins by connecting affect to rhetorical theory and offers a method for tracking its three modalities in relation to economic markets. Each of the following chapters compares a major theorist of capitalism with one of his important critics, beginning with the juxtaposition of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who set the agenda not only for arguments endorsing and critiquing capitalism but also for the affective energies associated with these positions. Subsequent chapters restage this initial debate through pairs of economic theorists—John Maynard Keynes and Thorstein Veblen, Friedrich Hayek and Theodor Adorno, and Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith—who represent key historical moments. In each case, Chaput demonstrates, capitalism's critics have fallen short in their rhetorical effectiveness. Chaput concludes by exploring possibilities for escaping the straitjacket imposed by these debates. In particular she points to the biopolitical lectures of Michel Foucault as offering a framework for more persuasive anticapitalist critiques by reconstituting people's conscious understandings as well as their natural instincts.

Rhetoric and Public Affairs 26, No. 1
Rhetoric and Public Affairs 26, No. 1

Author: Catherine L. Langford

Publisher:

Published: 2023-05-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781684302161

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Articles Recasting the Villain in the Communitarian American Dream: Obama in Osawatomie and the 2012 Election Robert C. Rowland Designing "The People": Constitutive Fractures in Contemporary Collectives Daniel J. DeVinney Standing Down, Standing Together: Coalition-Building at Standing Rock Lisa Silvestri Replacing Notorious: Barret, Ginsburg, and Postfeminist Positioning Calvin R. Coker Book Reviews James E. Caron, Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern "Truthiness" and Civic Engagement Anna M. Young Mel Laracey, Informing a Nation: The Newspaper Presidency of Thomas Jefferson Brandon M. Johnson Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet Bailey, editors, Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work Carly S. Woods Catherine Chaput, Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates Divine N. Aboagye

Oligarchy in America
Oligarchy in America

Author: Luke Winslow

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0817361545

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A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy's deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home. Winslow argues that generic labels like "billionaires" for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of democratic oligarchy--an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth. Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others. Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science.

Behind the Rhetoric
Behind the Rhetoric

Author: George McFarlane

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1409298264

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This book aims to shed light on the meaning of some major economic and social issues that are complex but are often glossed over. Central to the study is the checkered history of capitalism. Recent events around the world have revived the perennial debate on central planning versus free enterprise. With the demise of communism, capitalism is spreading worldwide, but how well is it performing? Are some shortcomings being papered over? Is the growing power of large transnational corporations posing an unacceptable threat to the democratic nation state? Are traditional social services and basic utilities being eroded by the greed of private capital? These are the types of issues in political economy discussed in this book. The aim is to look behind the high-sounding rhetoric of politicians as they claim to be administering good medicine to ‘the economy’.

Arguing with Numbers
Arguing with Numbers

Author: James Wynn

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0271089237

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As discrete fields of inquiry, rhetoric and mathematics have long been considered antithetical to each other. That is, if mathematics explains or describes the phenomena it studies with certainty, persuasion is not needed. This volume calls into question the view that mathematics is free of rhetoric. Through nine studies of the intersections between these two disciplines, Arguing with Numbers shows that mathematics is in fact deeply rhetorical. Using rhetoric as a lens to analyze mathematically based arguments in public policy, political and economic theory, and even literature, the essays in this volume reveal how mathematics influences the values and beliefs with which we assess the world and make decisions and how our worldviews influence the kinds of mathematical instruments we construct and accept. In addition, contributors examine how concepts of rhetoric—such as analogy and visuality—have been employed in mathematical and scientific reasoning, including in the theorems of mathematical physicists and the geometrical diagramming of natural scientists. Challenging academic orthodoxy, these scholars reject a math-equals-truth reduction in favor of a more constructivist theory of mathematics as dynamic, evolving, and powerfully persuasive. By bringing these disparate lines of inquiry into conversation with one another, Arguing with Numbers provides inspiration to students, established scholars, and anyone inside or outside rhetorical studies who might be interested in exploring the intersections between the two disciplines. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Catherine Chaput, Crystal Broch Colombini, Nathan Crick, Michael Dreher, Jeanne Fahnestock, Andrew C. Jones, Joseph Little, and Edward Schiappa.

Persons of the Market
Persons of the Market

Author: Kevin Musgrave

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2022-08-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 162895471X

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Taking corporate personhood as a starting point, Persons of the Market observes the complex historical entanglement of Christian theology and liberal capitalism to shed new light on their seemingly odd marriage in contemporary American politics. Author Kevin Musgrave highlights the ways that theories of corporate and human personhood have long been and remain bound together by examining four case studies: the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1886 Santa Clara decision, the role of early twentieth-century advertisers in endowing corporations with souls, Justice Lewis Powell Jr.’s eponymous memo of 1971, and the arc of the conservative movement from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Tracing this rhetorical history of the extension and attribution of personhood to the corporate form illustrates how the corporation has for many increasingly become a normative model or ideal to which human persons should aspire. In closing, the book offers preliminary ideas about how we might fashion a more democratic and humane understanding of what it means to be a person.

Activism and Rhetoric
Activism and Rhetoric

Author: JongHwa Lee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-26

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1351385402

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The second edition of this formative collection offers analysis of the work rhetoric plays in the principles and practices of today’s culture of democratic activism. Editors JongHwa Lee and Seth Kahn—and their diverse contributors working in communication and composition studies both within and outside academia—provide explicit articulation of how activist rhetoric differs from the kinds of deliberative models that rhetoric has exalted for centuries, contextualized through and by contributors’ everyday lives, work, and interests. New to this edition are attention to Black Lives Matter, the transgender community, social media environments, globalization, and environmental activism. Simultaneously challenging and accessible, Activism and Rhetoric: Theories and Contexts for Political Engagement is a must-read for students and scholars who are interested in or actively engaged in rhetoric, composition, political communication, and social justice. Chapters 1, 6, and 13 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Rhetoric in Debt
Rhetoric in Debt

Author: Kellie Sharp-Hoskins

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2023-05-26

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0271096527

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In recent years, household indebtedness in the United States reached its highest levels in history. From mortgages to student loans, from credit card bills to US deficit spending, debt is widespread and increasing. Drawing on scholarship from economics, accounting, and critical rhetoric and social theory, Kellie Sharp-Hoskins critiques debt not as an economic indicator or a tool of finance but as a cultural system. Through case studies of the student-loan crisis, medical debt, and the abuses of municipal bonds, Sharp-Hoskins reveals that debt is a rhetorical construct entangled in broader systems of wealth, rule, and race. Perhaps more than any other social marker or symbol, the concept of “debt” indicates differences between wealthy and poor, productive and lazy, secure and risky, worthy and unworthy. Tracking the emergence and work of debt across temporal and spatial scales reveals how it exacerbates vulnerabilities and inequities under the rhetorical cover of individual, moral, and volitional calculation and equivalency. A new perspective on a serious problem facing our society, Rhetoric in Debt not only reveals how debt organizes our social and cultural relations but also provides a new conceptual framework for a more equitable world.

The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power
The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power

Author: Nathan Crick

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-04

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 1040130100

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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.

Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements
Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements

Author: Luke Winslow

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1003859216

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This book examines “Rhetorical Children” as visible and vocal communicators, shaping public discourse on contentious social issues related to organized labor, civil rights, gun violence, and climate change. This book explores four key social movement case studies: the 1903 Mother Jones-led March of the Mill Children to reform child labor laws, the 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,-led Children’s Crusade to end segregation, the 2018 Parkland student-led March for Our Lives movement to end gun violence, and the ongoing struggle for climate change mitigation led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Through these case studies, the book outlines three rhetorical strategies, namely children’s ability to activate adults’ moral obligation; to invoke threats to natality and lost childhood; and to disrupt social order. It enables readers to better understand rhetorical children and the rhetorical tools required for social movements. Assessing the powerful role children play in shaping public discourse, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Communication Studies, Rhetoric, Public Address, Social Movements, and Cultural Studies.