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.
1 Prolegomena to Future Inquiry into Rhetoric and Power
Nathan Crick
Part 1. Theoretical Foundations
2 Infraontology: Rhetoric, Insurgency, Abolition
Omedi Ochieng
3 Economic New Materialism and the Invention of Affective Possibilities
Catherine Chaput
4 Political Style, Formalism, and the Anthropocene
Robert Hariman
5 Abolitionist John Brown, Gun Clubs, and the Rhetoric of Physical Violence
Jay P. Childers
6 The Universe of Things: Power in a More than Human World
Kevin Michael DeLuca and Joshua Trey Barnett
7 The Rhetorical Analysis of Unconscious Forms of Persuasion
Michael Lane Bruner
Part 2. Propaganda, Politics, and the State
8 Culturally Sensitive Engagement: Enabling Citizen Deliberation in Transportation Needs
Rebecca M. Townsend and Mary Rosado
9 Rhetorical Criticism as the Art of Questioning What We Take for Granted: An Inquiry into the “American Dream”
Jeremy Engels, Tiara Good, John Minbiole, William Saas and Frank Stec
10 Moralizing an Electoral Crisis: The Rhetoric of Moral Words in Ghana’s 2020 Election Dispute
Nancy Henaku
11 “This is Not Who We are as a Nation”: Theorizing Collective Identity in the US
Mary E. Stuckey
12 A Hestian Defense of the Oikos: The Authoritarian Mother Persona of Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Valerie Palmer-Mehta
Part 3. Resistance and Social Movements
13 Soup, Glue, and Art: Iconoclasm from Below in Just Stop Oil’s Use of Image Events
James Collins and Roberta Chevrette
14 The Power of Mutual Aid and Care Amy Pason 15 “How Can We Use This to Create Power?”: Revisiting the Rhetoric of Consciousness-Raising for Intersectional Solidarity
Dana L. Cloud
16 Meredith and the Monument: The Ecology of Memory at the University of Mississippi
Dave Tell
17 Body Rhetoric: Containing the Filthy Body of Irish Republicanism in Long Kesh Prison
Kate Siegfried
Part 4. Culture, Society, and Identity
18 Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Settler Power: Lessons for the End Times in Eruption
Santhosh Chandrashekar and Christina R. Foust
19 In Search of a Verb: An Affective Rhetorical Criticism of “The Hill We Climb”
Lee M. Pierce
20 Prophets, Presidents, and Democracy
Theon Edward Hill
21 The Bamboozle of the Funny: Conservative Comedic Counterfeit Resilience
Liz Sills
22 “Birmingham is Really on Mars”: White Innocence and A Good Conscience
Raquel M. Robvais
23 Collective Rewor(l)ding in the Wreckage of Hauntings and Haunting Situations
Romeo Garcia, Jenna Zan, Muath Qadous, Mitzi Ceballos, Keith L. McDonald and Sabit Bastakotia
Part 5. Discourses of Technique and Organization
24 AI Chatbots, Translative Rhetoric, and the Future of Public Discourse
G. Mitchell Reyes
25 Out of Time: The Spectacular Temporalities of Border Crisis
Lisa A. Flores and Mikayla Torres
26 Drawing the Line: Independent Commissions as Deliberative Spaces for Citizen Driven Redistricting
Ron VonBurg and Marcus Paroske
27 Conflict Narratives of Competitive Victimhood: On the Storied Dis/Organization of Collective Action
Anna Wiederhold Wolfe
28 Material Forces in the Brain Sciences: A Neuro-Ontological Compliment to Neurorhetorics
David Gruber
Part 6. Prospects for the Future
29 Soy Porque Somos: Touring and Planting Trees as Convivial Rhetoric on a Precarious Planet
Kundai Chirindo and Phaedra C. Pezzullo
30 Chastened Humanism and Metabolic Transcendence
Ira Allen
31 Apocalypsis, Truth, and Cultural Anxiety
E. Johanna Hartelius
32 From Black Twitter to Musk’s X: A Case Study in Rhetoric, Media, Culture, and Power
Alisa Hardy, Matthew Salzano and Damien Smith Pfister
33 Rhetorical Powermapping: Converging Solidarities for Translocal Ecological Justice
Constance Gordon
34 On the Solidarity of Species: Cybernetics, Biopolitics, and the Future of Human Unity
Jeff Pruchnic
Biography
Nathan Crick is Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, USA. His recent books include Rhetorical Public Speaking, 4th edition (Routledge, 2022) and The Rhetoric of Social Movements (Routledge, 2020).
