The emergence of populist politicians internationally in the past twenty years is remarkable. This phenomenon has prompted voluminous academic analyses: scholars from political science, political theory, and media studies have analyzed populism in books, articles, and edited collections. Rhetoric as a discipline has been relatively quiet. Populist Rhetorics: Case Studies and a Minimalist Definition proposes to address the dearth of work in disciplinary rhetoric not by inviting scholars identified with rhetorical studies exclusively (though some are) to analyze populism but by asking all the contributors to take a “rhetorical approach” in analyzing the discourse of a populist politician. The editors associate a rhetorical approach with, especially, close readings, and each contributor analyzes at least one text of a populist politician to see how the text works to persuade the audience the text invokes. This disciplined (in both senses of the word) approach marks this volume as important for readers of Rhetoric and Public Affairs and gives the volume a unity that many collections lack, further advanced by the apparent agreement among the contributors to raise fundamental questions concerning how to understand populism; to wit, should populism be thought of as an ideology or as a style? Since the chapters include populists from both the left and from the right, and since the contributors are committed to a rhetorical approach, it is not surprising that the authors individually and collectively conclude that populism is performative, not ideological. Finally, this volume gives witness to what is truly remarkable (some might say scary) about our particular moment: that populism is international. The case studies examine the rhetoric of populists from Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Venezuela, and the United States.The object of Paul Elliot Johnson's analysis in “Populist Melancholy” is the Republican Platform of 2016, adopted by the party without change in 2020. That the party decided to reproduce the same platform in 2020 following the Trump presidency suggests to Johnson that the grievances that the platform identifies could not be addressed by political action; otherwise, why weren't at least some of the grievances ameliorated while Trump was in office? On Johnson's reading, the “people” of the Republican imaginary see themselves as weak and powerless—victims. He argues that Freud's analysis of melancholia captures well both the feeling of loss that the Trump base experiences and its inability to articulate a positive path to addressing this loss—thus, on his analysis, the pathology of the current American right. In defining Republican populism in psychological terms, Johnson's thesis recalls Richard Hofstadter's argument that populism is fueled by status grievance and resentment, rather than material conditions.In “Voltagabbana Rhetorics: Turncoating as a Populist Strategy in Pandemic Times,” Pamela Pietrucci notes a propensity of populists to practice a voltagabbana, a turncoat or flip-flopping rhetoric. She notes that Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, and Matteo Salvini—all identified as right-wing populists—changed both their positions and their practice with regard to masking during the Covid pandemic; none attempted to reconcile the contradictions in their advice or practice. Pietrucci examines in detail the voltagabbana rhetoric of Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League and the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy in 2019. As is typical of populists, Salvini lacks an historical connection to a consistent ideology; he began his career as a Communist while at present his politics are right-wing. According to Pietrucci, the positions Salvini advances are based on the analysis produced by “The Beast,” a search engine that identifies the terms, themes, and memes most prevalent in Internet computer searches. If “hydroxychloroquine” is trending well, then presumably Salvini would endorse it as an effective Covid cure that “bureaucrats” are keeping from the public. On Pietrucci's analysis, Salvini has no ideology. He might be labeled a populist of “algorithmic” opportunism (73). Ultimately, the politics that Salvini practices, she concludes, is one of disavowal, whose inconsistency is in the service of deniability (75–76).In “Brexit, YouTube and the Populist Rhetorical Ethos,” Alan Finlayson maintains that populism should be understood more as a political style or performance than an ideology, drawing extensively on work in rhetorical studies to make his case. Finlayson argues that ethos is central to populist rhetoric, not merely its premise but also its conclusion (86). The populist appeals to voters to become “the people” that they already are, he maintains. The object of his analysis is the YouTube video, “The Truth About Brexit,” created by the popular conspiracy-theorist Paul Joseph Watson, which had nearly a million views during the Brexit debate. Finlayson's analysis is attentive to the effective use that Watson makes of the affordances of YouTube as a medium as well as the discursive contradictions in Watson's narrative.In “Populism and the Rise of the AFD in Germany,” Anne Ulrich, Olaf Kramer, and Dietmar Till report the rise of populist movements from the right, especially the AFD (Alternative for Germany), that have gained prominence via the use of a rhetoric of provocation suited to online broadcast. The authors maintain that new media create spaces for provocateurs to perform an identity and identification with “the people.” The authors offer close readings of speeches by Björn Höcke, a prominent member of the New Right, and by Alice Weidel, co-chair of AFD. The Höcke speech, broadcast live on YouTube, employs rhetorical devices typical of demagoguery: breaking taboos, stoking indignation, and inspiring negative emotions (122), all with an intention to provoke. To this end, Höcke identified the “‘true victims’” of World War II as the inhabitants of Dresden killed in the allied bombing in February 1945 (125). Weidel is similarly provocative in her characterization of immigration as a “Great Replacement” strategy that installs fertile “‘headscarf girls’” and “‘knife men’” as the basis for a new majority (130). The racists metonymies are made for circulation as memes, the authors argue.Sophia Hatzisavvidou analyzes the populist rhetoric of socialist Alexis Tsipras who became prime minister of Greece in 2015. As a result of the 2007–08 world-wide recession, Greece's debt was staggering. The European Union, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank conditioned a bailout on Greece's enacting of severe austerity measures. But round after round of tax increases, while producing much general suffering, seemed to make economic matters worse; thus, “the crisis” of 2015. Hatzisavvidou analyzes Tsipras's campaign of resistance to the austerity measures, characterizing Tsipras's rhetoric as a moralizing discourse that contrasted “the people” as morally superior—more genuine than the technocratic elites. The technocrats’ austerity program failed on its own economic terms, Tsipras maintains, but succeeded in creating a resistant people with a “‘purity’” (156), who want “to take their lives into their own hands,” and who stand up to “‘blind conservative forces’” (157). Drawing on Aristotle's three types of rhetoric, Hatzisavvidou characterizes Tsipras's speeches, surprisingly, as epideictic rather than deliberative, surprising because, like deliberative rhetoric for Aristotle, Tsipras's speeches advocate a future-oriented solution to a political problem. Still, the speeches are indeed epideictic because the audience addressed lacks the power to solve the problem: the bureaucrats held the purse strings, and Greece had no choice but to accede to the bankers’ demands.Viktor Orbán can credibly claim to be the model for the contemporary populist-right nationalist leader. His rhetoric is the subject of Miklós Sükösd's “Victorious Victimization: Orbán the Orator—Deep Securitization and State Populism in Hungary's Propaganda State.” Sükösd finds the template for Orban's subsequent rhetoric in his speech at Heroes Square, attacking Soviet occupation in 1989; at the time, Orban was the leader of the leftist Fidesz party. The speech set the pattern for speeches that Orban gave annually since his election as prime minister in 2010. On Sükösd's analysis, in Orban's case a populist rhetoric served first a liberal and then an illiberal politics. Drawing on a content analysis of forty-one of these speeches, Sükösd's argues that Orban's rhetoric is especially notable for fear-mongering: Orban exaggerates threats to Hungary's sovereignty and national character from EU bureaucrats and immigrants. If the Hungarian voter is especially vulnerable to such threats, the history of Hungary can explain why: Hungary was dominated by the Hapsburgs in the eighteenth century, followed by the Russians, then, in the twentieth century first by the Nazis and then the Soviets. Sükösd's essay is notable for giving a relatively rich account of how populist appeals are rooted in national character. He writes, “Themes of fear, suffering and gloom occupy central places in Hungarian national identity and culture” (179). Hungary sees itself as “ever the guiltless victim of contempt, assault and injury perpetrated by others” (179).” Sükösd's analysis shows in a compelling way how perceived victimhood and its attendant resentments are fertile ground for the populist.Pierre Ostiguy identifies his analysis specifically as rhetorical in his chapter, “The Voice and Message of Hugo Chávez: A Rhetorical Analysis.” By a rhetorical approach, he appears to mean not only an analysis that features close readings but also an analysis of “relational-performative” elements, more traditionally the fourth canon, actio. Ostiguy identifies a number of features of Hugo Chávez's rhetoric that mark his brand of populism as unusual and extreme. The speeches are uniquely characterized by expressions of passionate love: for fatherland (la patria), for the flag, and for Christ, reflecting values that are more typically associated with right-wing politics. Famously aligning himself and his movement with Símon Bolívar, Chávez claims to be less an heir to that original revolution than its re-incarnation and extension, as if he and his movement were pre-ordained to bring about its messianic completion. Furthermore, Chávez would not merely represent the Venezuelan people but embody them. Chávez, Ostiguy writes, “is the people.”Like other populists Chávez also shares a penchant for “the low,” an important idea that Ostiguy advanced in earlier work. “The low” manifests as a general vulgarity that is intended to shock, especially in coarse, personal insults. Ostiguy notes as exemplary a Chávez speech in March 2006, in which he “unloaded” on George Bush (following the invasion of Iraq) with personal insults, including calling Bush a donkey, a genocider, a drunk, a sicko, a coward and worse. Equally important is Chávez's actio. Speaking without a manuscript or teleprompter, Chávez exhibits an apparent spontaneity but delivers with cadence and rhythm, in a deep baritone, punctuated by an expressive arm waving.This is an excellent, well-conceived collection. Each of the chapters reviews the literature on populism and offers a taxonomy for classifying and understanding it. Each also critically analyzes at least one work that bears the populist label. The chapters demonstrate the value of a rhetorical take on populist rhetoric. It invites rhetoric scholars to take a seat at the table. We should heed that invitation.

The morning I picked up Disorder in the Court: Morality, Myth, and the Insanity Defense, news was spreading about the Michigan State University shooting. While preparing this review, there were several more mass shootings. Such tragic events (re)shape our lives. The Aurora, Colorado shooting profoundly redrew the social boundaries of my own life, and it is no coincidence that the Aurora shooting is where Andrea Alden begins her illuminating book. Disorder in the Court uses “mass shooting” as a visible marker of mental illness and a productive opening for a study of the rhetorical shifts in the insanity defense.From the outset, Alden explores humanity's desire to reason with madness, highlighting society's perpetual search for the origin of mental illness. Her deep historical and close textual work demonstrates the constitutive nature of language in relation to fields of expertise, like law and medicine, that require a facade of stability in exchange for the public's faith. Disorder in the Court highlights three rhetorical moments in the legal and medical responses over time, mapped by shifts in the insanity defense. Alden then turns to analyze the high-profile trial of John Hinckley, Jr., and, finally, summarizes the current state of the insanity defense in the United States, ruminating on biomedical advances. Alden posits this book not as a solution to problems of madness and malice, but rather as a chance to “untangle the complexities of the rhetoric of sanism,” or as she defines it: the “irrational fear of mental illness and people who suffer from it” (4, 5). Disorder in the Court unpacks the historical realities at the intersection of law and medicine, identifying both the explicit and implicit tropes of sanism, such as shared fate, the law as (failed) deterrence, and pandemonium.Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the hegemonic rhetoric of sanism and its history. From medical advances to reforms in evidentiary standards, Disorder in the Court emphasizes that a rhetorical study of textual evidence can expose the shortcomings of ideological discourses. This detailed textual work is bolstered by the inclusion of the primary texts at the end of the volume, signaling a strong appreciation for the text itself. Identifying the danger inherent in a rhetoric of sanism, Alden reminds us that the anxiety that “I, too, may become mad” does not result in compassion; it results in segregation and the asylum mentality of the early 1800s. Or, to borrow the Platonic perspective of sanism: “Madmen are not to be free” (24).Chapter 2, “A Brief History of Western Thought on Mental Illness and Its Relevance to the Law,” is a masterclass in condensing a long timeline into digestible material without sacrificing details. Alden extensively covers the dialectic of rationality/irrationality from fourth and fifth-century perceptions of “madness,” through Greek and Roman civilizations’ emphasis on reason, and into the moral panic of the Middle Ages, before landing at the humanitarian turn of the Enlightenment era, when the body and the brain were regarded as intertwined. By weaving textual evidence from Plato and Aristotle, from St. Augustine, and from John Locke and Renee Descartes, Alden maps the evolution of thought through these discourses with authority and interest.In Chapters 3 through 5, Alden shifts to analyzing specific cases that have reshaped the insanity defense. She begins with an 1843 political assassination trial, where defendant Daniel McNaughtan asserted paranoid delusions as the cause of his violent actions. Alden describes the burgeoning field of psychiatry, where conceptions of “madness” were shifting from a moral (religious) failure to a modern medical defect. Swift and public backlash to McNaughtan's acquittal included tropes of pandemonium, fakery, and (medical) illegitimacy, ultimately resulting in a verdict of “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect,” a phrase still recognizable to a modern audience. The eponymous McNaughtan Rules require a defendant to be unaware of the “nature or quality of the act . . . [and] not know it was wrong” (46).Chapter 4 introduces readers to the reforms in mental health care in the nineteenth century, eventually focusing on two cases, Parsons and Davis. Alden argues that as the field of psychiatry moved away from harsh methods of patient confinement (led by reformers like Dorthea Dix), legal questions shifted toward tests for impulse control. Alden first investigates the impacts of the appeal in Parsons, where Alabama Supreme Court Justice Somerville reversed a jury verdict. Sommerville's opinion argued that judicial authority should consider a defendant's ability to control their actions, elevating the discipline of psychiatry by adopting the reformist position of compassion and not assuming a defendant's moral failure. A few years after Parsons, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion in Davis v. United States (1895) that extended the same approach, a “control test,” as the legal standard: Could the defendant resist their “irresistible impulse” at the time of the crime? Alden argues that, although scant, the media coverage of both Parsons and Davis relied on tropes of sanism. Not unlike more contemporary debates, public reaction to these cases was dismay about the law as a criminal deterrent, challenging the idea that momentary loss of self-control mitigated legal culpability.By the time Durham v. United States was decided in 1954, the publication of the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) was only a year away. In Chapter 5, we learn that the field of psychiatry had been reshaped by the influences of neurologists like Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, and the psychiatric field was continually revising categories of mental illness and treatments. To illustrate the last major rhetorical shift in the insanity defense, Alden recounts the fate of Monty Durham—a recidivist's tale of petty crimes, institutionalizations, and temporary release into unstable housing. By the time of his appeal in 1954, the system was shifting blame for Durham, arguing about the likelihood of future criminality. Alden writes: “Nobody knew what to do with him, and nobody wanted to be responsible for him or his actions, so they just shuffled him back and forth between jail and the hospital” (68).Readers will surely recognize the deflection of blame in this modern rhetorical cycle, and while Alden details the trial and its misgivings, this reader couldn't help but return to the opening example of mass shootings and the pervasive anxieties about the inadequacy of law. And indeed, Disorder in the Court promptly brings Durham into conversation with McNaughtan, Parsons, and Davis. Alden rounds out Chapter 5 by examining the wide-ranging, written opinion from Circuit Judge Bazelon, who argued that all prior standards for legal insanity were insufficient. Bazelon's opinion historicized the medical and legal debates before moving to establish a new effects-based “product test,” meant to consider updated medical discourses concerning mental disease; this replaces the presumption of a lack of impulse control with the idea that a defendant's mental state might influence planning, decision-making, and execution of a crime (as is the case in schizophrenia or paranoid delusions). It was contrary to the previous position that legal insanity would be characterized by an inability to plan or execute actions with intent or purpose. Despite the potential importance the Durham opinion could have had, this new legal framework did not become the standard. Alden contextualizes Bazelon's opinion in relation to its reception and effects.Chapter 6 applies Alden's framework to the criminality and culpability of John Hinckley, Jr. in his trial following an assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan. The trial arguments referred to categories laid out in the DSM-III, revisions to which had heralded the biomedical turn in psychiatry as the “triumph of science over clinical ideology” (78). Alden lays out the particulars of the Hinckley case, from his cross-country travel to contact Jodie Foster (whom he relentlessly stalked) to his attempts to conceal the actions he planned to take against government officials. Alden explains that the trial and media coverage focused on questions of rationality, mainly Hinckley's actions and his travel. Was Hinckley's meticulous behavior the cold-calculating choice of a determined killer or the obsessive, single-minded mania of a raving lunatic?The moral outrage that followed Hinckley's acquittal relies on the tropes of sanism that Alden identifies throughout the book. Because she includes explicit and implicit examples of the tropes, readers have a framework to understand how Hinckley's “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict was received by the public. Lambasted as a miscarriage of justice, as encouraging criminal action, and as proof that experts-for-hire pervert the criminal justice system, the Hinckley trial's response illustrates sanism's pervasiveness. Following the trial, Congress passed the 1984 Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA), and some states adopted alternative verdicts (such as “guilty but mentally ill”) or eliminated the insanity defense altogether, though most still employ some form of the McNaughtan Rules. Alden explains that legal standards lag behind the current understanding of psychiatric medicine and further highlights that, like other legal questions, laws and punishments differ across states.She concludes the book by arguing that the pervasive rhetoric of sanism has ideological staying power; it outlasts the material shifts of case details and medical progress. Moreover, the legal standard of insanity remains the same: “Here we are, back in England in 1843,” Alden writes (97). The legal landscape is, in effect, unchanged. She concludes this masterful book with a careful proposal for how to rethink discourses: first by acknowledging they are, in fact, rhetorical; second by tapping into the nature versus nurture debate. Exploring newer, technologically-driven medical advances, Alden leaves her readers with this consideration: “anti-social behavior is the result of both biology and socialization, nature and nature” (99). Alden argues that rhetoric helps us “untangle the knots” of a one-size-fits-all approach to law and psychiatry (100). As she concludes, she reminds readers that hers is a study of competing discourses, an attempt to “shore up their boundaries” and smooth “over the narrative ruptures always threatening to break through” (95). In other words, when analyzed as rhetorical discourses, the ideological faultlines of law and medicine become clear. Rhetoric, Alden writes, “allows us to see more clearly why” there are still problems at the intersection of law and medicine in the insanity defense (102).So while we constantly fear the next mass shooting and struggle somewhere between the Platonic ideal of locking madness away and empathy towards those suffering with mental illness, it is evident that Alden has given us a reference point for understanding the intersection of legal and medical discourses in the insanity defense. Identifying the tropes that shortchange meaningful engagement with mental health opens the possibility for a both/and approach to law and psychiatry. While scientific discovery sorts out how our nurture affects our nature (and vice versa), rhetorical scholars might continue to consider where science interacts with social and cultural constructions, like the law, to promote nuanced understanding of mental illness.

Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics explores three trans and queer Asian American archives to ask, how can homing as a form of storytelling assist in situating trans and queer Asian Americans (QTAPI) in the United States’ broader narrative of belonging?Throughout the book, V. Jo Hsu conceptualizes and works with the following key terms: homing, a critical approach to storytelling that situates individual experiences in relevant histories and events (9); constellation, the plotting of individual narratives into a network that has the capacity to hold a multitude of relationships and responsibilities (11); diasporic listening, the act of critically attuning oneself to reciprocities ignored or obscured by normative frames (11); and lastly, commonplaces, storylines upon which common understanding can be found, similar to Aristotle's topoi (26).Hsu begins by situating the reader in a brief overview of Asian American history in the United States. Back to the exploitation of Chinese railroad laborers, Hsu traces the evolution of the spaces of “belonging” wherein Asian Americans have been conceptualized via public imagination—from yellow peril as diseased and hypersexualized beings to the model minority of assimilation, and back to anti-Asian hate during and beyond the age of COVID-19. By drawing upon homing as method, Hsu argues that individual stories from trans and queer Asian American individuals can be placed within a larger history and narrative of control. “Listening diasporically to this history exposes the entanglements of yellow peril/model minority with other controlling narratives of U.S. history,” Hsu writes (21). Each chapter explores an archive of oral histories, photography, community work, and storytelling by and for QTAPI, challenging the model minority myth in their respective ways. How do such stories work in tandem, Hsu asks, to interpret and invent Asian America's past and future?Chapter 1, titled love, showcases the Dragon Fruit Project, an intergenerational oral history project that connects younger QTAPI volunteers with older QTAPI activists to record stories about love, family, and community (27). The project was created by historian Amy Sueyoshi upon finding that only two out of 702 entries in the GLBT Historical Society's archive were voices of Asian and Pacific Islander women. Sueyoshi passed the project along to API Equality—Northern California (APIENC) to expand and maintain (39). Love, when constricted by capitalist logics to the idea of the heterosexual productive nuclear family, has scripted the racialization of Asian Americans who, at times, were projected to defy said logics in relation to whiteness (38). The Dragon Fruit Project illustrates alternate intimacies and belongings, challenging normative scripts of love by means of constellating various individual stories into an interconnected narrative (39).Chapter 2, titled resilience, examines the Visibility Project, an archive of photographs that place empowerment in the context of community, pushing against neoliberal, individualist understandings of resilience (74). The Visibility Project reconstructs the commonplace to critique racialized, gendered, and ableist constructions of resilience. Photographer, activist, and archivist Mia Nakano photographed over two hundred queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming Asian Americans, making this the largest collection focusing specifically on this population (86). Photos are displayed along with annotations of how individuals self-identified in terms of gender and ethnicity. As Hsu writes, “the subjects in the Visibility Project renounce the desire for belonging on normative terms, whether through U.S. citizenship or through inclusion in the majoritarian story of Asian America” (90). The Visibility Project also includes a digital history tour of Bay Area Queer Asian Pacific American History and a storytelling and performance workshop built upon archival material (84–85). Ultimately, the Visibility Project reframes Asian American resilience as a “communal empathy” that “channels individual stories into negotiations of communal needs,” empowering QTAPI as “co-conspirators at the fore of a transformational American story” (107).Chapter 3, titled ancestry, features the Queer Ancestors Project, a printmaking and writing workshop for LGBTQ+ youth. Given the complicated experiences of family that queer diasporic subjects often have, the Queer Ancestors Project ensconces students within queer family and encourages them to “listen for submerged relations and story them into far-reaching genealogies” and tend to their chosen familial bonds (111). Ancestry may be understood here as “an array of stories through which QTAPI place themselves in longer traditions of resistance, courage, and care,” connecting them to past and future trans and queer kin (111). Hsu identifies the Queer Ancestors Project's workshop anthologies as a form of kuaer pedagogy. This combines critical pedagogy and queer theory by drawing upon E. Patrick Johnson's quare studies, which center race and class in experiences of gender and sexuality, and Wenshu Lee's subsequent kuaer theory, which takes quare studies through a transnational, transcultural turn across borders.1 Identification goes beyond genetic ancestry tests and “scientific racism”—ancestors can be chosen via shared struggle and resistance, “reaching across timelines and geographies for sturdy, imaginative family formations” (121–122).Chapter 4 centers Hsu themself within the themes of love, resilience, and ancestry, as well as proposing the bodymind as a form of archive that records experiences and stories. Hsu constellates their own personal experiences within their parents’ stories and histories, their experiences of resilience within pain and disability in the academy. To connect bodyminds to homing, Hsu writes that if “our bodyminds archive the experiences we encounter, then homing not only assigns meaning to those archives, but channels that meaning into new ways of encountering ourselves and one another” (183). Homing can be a writing praxis, a way for diasporic subjects to reinterpret their places of origin, creating new connections of belonging and theorizing how we survive together (146). Especially for diasporic subjects, homing is a verb in actively shaping spaces into those of belonging and community for their own selves (183).As a diasporic subject myself who found herself resonating with many of Hsu's stories, I found Hsu's concepts and frameworks to be imaginative and generative. Hsu's work is particularly helpful for scholars looking for frameworks to situate a seemingly disparate scattering of individual narratives and stories within a larger constellation, making meaning out of many. It is also bound to be helpful for scholars looking for methods that center subjects’ active meaning-making in their worlds, their own definitions of belonging, of family—of homing. Hsu's in-depth research into each of these queer and trans Asian American archives is an invaluable piece of critical scholarship.

Rhetoric and psychoanalysis have a long history of entanglement. As Patrick Mahoney wrote, it would be “hard to exaggerate the historical and intrinsic significance of rhetoric for psychoanalysis”; Aristotle's Rhetoric could even be said to constitute “the first major psychological treatise in the West.”1 Diego Enrique Londoño, drawing on Juan Rigoli, has documented the influence of rhetoric on eighteenth and nineteenth century alienism,2 while Michael Billig, Risto Fried, and others have sought these links in Freud and later theorists.3 Although Jacques Lacan gets most of the credit, two pioneering women beat him to the punch in systematically introducing rhetorical concepts (especially metaphor): Gertrude Buck and Ella Freeman Sharpe.4 Rhetoricians, in turn, have enriched their craft through psychoanalytic thinking—first with Sigmund Freud (most notably in Kenneth Burke), then Carl Jung,5 with a great deal of later work inspired by Lacan,6 although authors like Heinz Kohut and D. W. Winnicott also make occasional appearances.7Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric is the latest effort to find resonances between rhetoric and psychoanalysis to the mutual benefit of both disciplines. The book is quite short and by necessity focuses on a few key thinkers—Burke represents rhetoric, while Freud and Lacan epitomize the psychoanalytic tradition. Although Adleman and Vanderwees find some connections that are sure to be of interest to psychoanalytically inclined rhetoricians, they unfortunately do so while almost entirely omitting decades of significant work forging these links. Todd McGowan's blurb declaring the book “a miracle” for describing connections between rhetoric and psychoanalysis that “now seem clear and self-evident, but only because [Adleman and Vanderwees] have written this pathbreaking work” is sustainable only if one discounts the work cited above, plus many dozens of articles and books published by graduate students and junior rhetorical scholars. Lundberg's Lacan in Public, which undertakes a much more comprehensive study of the connections between rhetoric and psychoanalysis, is cited only to support a minor claim about Quintilian; if one were to ask a rhetorician working with psychoanalysis today to recommend a single volume on the topic, Lacan in Public might very well be the choice, whatever the rhetorician's opinion of the book. While it is always easy to lodge criticisms based on the omission of one's idiosyncratic favorites, the absences in Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric may set limits on the execution of its ambition. Rather than a continuation of scholarship on its overall topic, this book is a commentary on Lacan, Burke, and Freud narrowly, which does not diminish its contributions to that end but does make plain a missed opportunity to accomplish a larger goal.8Adleman and Vanderwees begin with a brief account of the “missed encounters” of psychoanalysis and rhetoric. Their central premise is that the two disciplines, “when closely scrutinized, often appear, uncannily, as each other's doppelgangers” due to their inquiries into human motives and their “perennial struggles with legitimacy” (1). This “peripheral status” as “third-class” denizens of “the republic of knowledge” is a major theme in the book (27). The authors claim that rhetoric disproportionately focuses attention on “pragmatic compositional concerns” while “almost none is allocated to bringing rhetorical theory to bear on . . . persuasion, influence, identifications, and propaganda” (9). This misconception is perhaps a product of the authors’ thin engagement with contemporary journals in the field (including this one), many of which do precisely this and few of which are cited. The phrase “new rhetoric” in the book's title might suggest some engagement with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca and Chaïm Perelman, but their work is not discussed—a particularly surprising choice because Lacan's own essay “Metaphor of the Subject” (which is cited) was written in direct response to Perelman. This is in line with a greater emphasis on the influence of psychoanalysis on rhetoric, rather than the converse or cross-pollination. Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric therefore repeats the “missed encounters” it identifies rather than benefiting from this “unending conversation.”Despite the decision not to deeply commit to the literature about the intersection of its two primary fields of interest, Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric makes a number of contributions to rhetorical scholarship. The first four chapters of the book engage with Burke fairly extensively. Chapter 1 explores the resonances between Burke and Freud, while Chapter 2 focuses closely on the concepts of symbolic action and attitude. The equation of attitude with Lacan's objet petit a, the “hallucinatory motor of desire” (45), is particularly interesting as an approach to the perennial problem of the relation between rhetoric and desire. Chapter 3 deals with identification as a concept in Freud and Burke with special reference to Burke's “Rhetoric of Hitler's ‘Battle,’” perhaps a particularly timely work which can be appreciated differently through a more thorough exposition of Freud's conceptual influence on Burke. Chapter 4 applies Burke's thought to conspiracy theories, an area where others have already leveraged psychoanalysis to good effect.9The last three chapters are somewhat more theoretical and, while the thread of Burke's thought persists, they lean toward Freud and Lacan. Chapter 5, about the origins of Freud's free association, is primarily of historical interest (and could perhaps benefit from engaging work on the pre-Freudian influence of rhetoric in psychology). Chapter 6 engages listening from rhetorical and psychoanalytic perspectives. Chapter 7 is less a Lacanian theory of rhetoric than an engagement with Lacan's own rhetoric and its implications for theory. It ends with a fine aphorism, borrowed from Simone Weil, about how the wall dividing rhetoric and psychoanalysis might also be the medium of communication between them.Taken as a whole, Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric is a worthwhile exposition of its specific foci, even though many other potential symbioses are left unexplored in this short text. For scholars of rhetoric whose familiarity with psychoanalysis is limited, but for whom Kenneth Burke or the topics of each chapter are of interest, this book can serve as a valuable place to begin thinking about psychoanalysis's confluence with rhetoric. Those knowledgeable about psychoanalysis outside the rhetorical tradition will likely find it helpful as well, especially because its treatment of rhetoric is accessible to non-specialists and forgoes the opportunity to grind intradisciplinary theoretical axes. Rhetoricians more extensively versed in psychoanalysis, however, will find particular points of interest, but may be somewhat frustrated by the book's failure to intervene in any of the important conversations happening at an intersection that Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric may seem to inaugurate, but in fact is simply compelled to repeat.

This edited collection offers an array of essays forwarding the rhetorical work constituting the political activity of and concerning Latin America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although scholars have certainly interrogated Latin American experiences in the United States and across the Western Hemisphere (some of whom have contributed to this volume), I can think of no other collection in rhetorical studies that supplies the kind of birds-eye-view of Latin America and its political landscape(s) as a whole. The edited volume is unabashedly transnational in its case studies, although not each individual case study is transnationally oriented, and the authors invited by the editors claim homes across the Western Hemisphere (e.g., the United States, Columbia, Argentina). In short, this book embodies and takes care to fulfill its commitment to presenting “rhetorics of democracy in the Americas.”Although it is customary to provide a brief synopsis of each of the chapters in a book review, the chapter summaries provided by the editors in the collection's Introduction are superbly written and need not be replicated here. I would encourage those interested in their summaries to access the “Introduction,” which is made available through the publisher's website.1 The book follows, flexibly, a conventional Part I “theory” and Part II “case study” structure that readers can navigate easily and according to their own needs. Each chapter stands alone quite well. Even so, in what follows I retrace the chapters and articulate what I think are the major questions the collection and each essay provokes. For, while this book is commendable for initiating a conversation, it would be a mistake to treat this volume as more than an entry into the exploration of “rhetoric of democracy in the Americas.” Thus, I provide a bridge between the entry point that I think the collection offers and further lines of inquiry that I believe it spurs.One of the collection's strengths, as I have stated, lies in its focus on the “Americas.” Given this focus, readers wishing to find how the notion of an “America” informs rhetorical or democratic theory must reflect on how they might extend the work provided by these chapters. For example, editors claim a “constitutive” notion of rhetoric over an “instrumental” view in the Introduction (15), but I find that most case studies adopt the language of “instrumental” rhetoric in their examinations (e.g., chapter six's discussion of “strategies”). Though readers might not care too much about whether one adopts an instrumental or constitutive view of rhetoric, I point out this feature to highlight that the collection's presumption of this distinction evinces its reliance upon conventional rhetorical theory. That most case studies interrogate “rhetoric” as a “tool” or “device” to be leveraged to some end underscores how these case studies recontextualize traditional rhetorical theory within Latin American spaces rather than spurring retheorizations of rhetorical inquiry. Similar presumptions about “democracy” and its supposed “ideal” also become manifest in each essay when trying to define democracy. The “Introduction” certainly provides some guidance by claiming democracy as “among the vital concepts in rhetorical studies” (5), and as a governmental form offering citizens a “promise” of “good things” (5–6). The collection's case studies, nonetheless, do not furnish much about what “democracy” entails or how democracy in Latin America differs from, in content and form, that in the United States or anywhere else. Democracy is presumed as a context for each study and an ideal in which rhetoric flourishes.Such presumptions, though not misguided or wrong, highlight not a problem with the collection as much as they illuminate opportunities for other scholars to take up. Christa Olson's chapter, as I read it, articulates a notion of the telluric in contrast to the traditional topos to encourage readers to consider new material stakes in rhetorical discourse—a materialism based in “ideas” of Latin America. Though gesturing toward the operationalization of the telluric in her beautifully written essay, Olson's proposal demonstrates how we might interrupt the conventional reliance on the “commonplace” for studying rhetoric in América. Cortez's essay does something similar to Olson in that he encourages a departure from a familiar concept—subalternity. Though offering the most philosophically minded take in the collection, his take-down of the “decolonial imaginary” underscores how studies involving Latin America pose a complex and inescapable problematic, namely, how to conceptualize Latin America without reproducing the very colonial structure rendering it, in the words of Walter Mignolo and other decolonial scholars, a fiction. While I personally remain skeptical that “rhetoric” is capable of resolving the issues Cortez raises, given the imperial stakes “rhetoric” qua art implicates, Cortez's argument that the terms we use to characterize and study “Latin America” cannot be presumed to give it a voice spurs scholars to reflect on the classifications used to identify non-dominant rhetorics.Although Part I begins with theoretical explorations, its remaining chapters take on a more practical tone. Chapters 3–5 address a different subject related to but not limited to U.S. relationships with Latin America(ns). De los Santos's chapter tackles the rhetorical contributions of migrants, a work that he is curiously committed to distance from prior work on citizenship despite suturing his study to “ancient Greece” (84). I find De los Santos's work to be quite similar to, for example, Josue David Cisneros's for its emphasis on a discursively constructed yet politically imagined citizenship. Nevertheless, perhaps the most surprising theme—or not, depending on the reader—was the prevalence of former President Donald Trump. I say surprising because, while President Donald Trump has had quite an influence on recent rhetorical studies, Trump's relationship to Latin America is not any more appalling, xenophobic, sly, or even pretentious than past U.S. presidents. I am not denying that this former President might have altered the geopolitical landscape of the Western Hemisphere during his administration, but I think that the ways in which chapters center Trump's influence suggest that his actions are an aberration. Still, while these scholars view more dissonance than coherence in U.S.-Latin American relations, I think that the essays foster inquiry along its opposing line, namely, answering the question of how consistently presidencies have negotiated and enforced a power imbalance between the United States and Latin America.The chapters encourage not necessarily a complete reassessment of “migrants,” “immigration,” or even “American Exceptionalism” as much as they compel revisitations of what we might call “familiar” rhetorics to impart a peculiarity to otherwise recognizable themes. That peculiarity is important, for, recalling Olson and Cortez, the ways in which we critically interrogate “rhetoric” in and through Latin America cannot be presumed to simply reinscribe what we already know about “rhetoric” or “democracy.” Indeed, as Butterworth underscores, “American Exceptionalism” takes a particular form when Cuba is involved, and it takes on a peculiar form when it involves relations with Latin America. Viewed thus, each of the chapters in Part 1 encourages scholars to come back to familiar rhetorics to “question the narratives of democracy” that we take for granted and presume to be universally operative.Part II takes up the theme of “Problematizing and Reconstructing Democracy in Latin America,” with each chapter proffering not only a unique perspective on politics in Latin America but a discrete take on “rhetorical” study within politically resonant moments. Privileging as it does not only Latin American regions but Latin American scholars, this section showcases what scholarship done in and through Latin America might look like for future scholars across the Western Hemisphere. More concretely, these essays magnify senses of rhetoric and rhetorical study that scholars interested in prioritizing Latin America might assume in their own work. Focused on a variety of politically rich subjects such as corruption (chapter 6), rhetorical agency (chapter 7), the religious right (chapter 8), presidential rhetoric (chapters 9 and 10), and, finally, crisis (chapter 11), these case studies diversify the subjects with which rhetoricians can—and should—grapple. At the same time, they underscore how these subjects might be theorized in and through Latin America. This is not to say that the subjects are exclusive to Latin America or that certain themes need to be relegated to Latin America. Rather, if I consider how many studies have been written on “corruption” in the United States, I might have to consider alternative vocabularies (e.g., racism, bureaucracy, morality, etc.) to expand my inquiry, since there are simply too few studies of U.S. political corruption outside of Bruce Gronbeck's 1978 essay—an essay nearly fifty years old! Studying rhetoric in Latin America is, these essays suggest, productive of the kinds of questions that rhetoric scholars across the Americas must consider. For, what happens in Latin America cannot be presumed to be exclusive to Latin America.Rhetoric of Democracy in the Americas challenges scholars to take on two distinct but related tasks. First, the collection urges us (U.S.-based scholars) to consider how we might employ familiar tools to study rhetorics in Latin America. No longer can or should we view rhetoric in Latin America as a uniquely Latin American operation in need of new tools. Even though calls from Olson and De los Santos to consider Latin America in “Américan” rhetoric creep toward a decade old (!), this collection encourages us not to provide comprehensive work but responsible work in interrogating relationships between politics and rhetoric in “the Americas.” U.S.-based scholars (of which I am one) must begin to view themselves as Américan scholars.Second, if U.S.-based scholars assume the identity of an “Américan scholar,” this collection encourages us to deploy and harness Latin American histories to theorize “rhetoric” and “democratic” politics across the Americas—including the United States. In what sense must we alter our rhetorical theories and vocabularies in light of the way persuasive communication is enacted and performed in Latin American spaces? How might we conceptualize rhetoric's relationship to “democracy” in light of the ways in which Latin American rhetorics engage with the United States? With other Latin American nations? With their own histories and traditions? Alejandra Vitale's essay (chapter 10), I suggest, demonstrates this concretely by revisiting how our conception of ēthos might be transformed when considering the rhetorical work accomplished through an Argentinian presidential farewell address. As readers will see, Vitale is no stranger to U.S.-based rhetorical scholarship, nor a stranger to Argentinian scholarship and culture. In the essay, Vitale demonstrates how conventional understandings of ēthos, a rhetorical concept that U.S.-based scholars might cringe at for its neo-Aristotelian status, might be disrupted and expanded by prioritizing a uniquely Latin American political context.The collection edited by Drs. Angel, Butterworth, and Gómez shows paths of inquiry that I think hold promise for graduate students looking to integrate more transnational approaches to their study or those wishing to study politics outside of U.S. borders. It is an exhibition in how to overcome theoretical challenges to the study of Latin American rhetorics, as well as how to problematize conventional understandings of rhetoric in light of having studied and taken seriously Latin American politics. Moreover, I think that The Pennsylvania State University Press deserves credit for expanding the repertoire of Latinx rhetorical inquiries with both the 24th volume and this 25th volume in the “Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation” series. That a couple of this press's latest volumes have focused on scholarship related to Latinx politics highlights how now is the time to strike the anvil and continue to pursue such a rich scholarly endeavor.

Part of the RSA series in transdisciplinary rhetoric, this volume brings together the insights of a diverse group of rhetorical scholars exploring the rhetorical dimensions of mathematics. There is no single perspective or approach on display as the reader is presented with studies of the rhetoric of mathematics as well as the use of rhetoric in mathematics and the rhetorical nature of mathematical language. These three prongs structure Edward Schiappa's foundational paper that explicitly informs the work of several contributors to the volume. In addition to these essentially theoretical explorations, the volume is rounded out by prescient applications that reinforce the topicality and importance of the subject matter. But any full review of the collection must begin with Schiappa's analyses.To the casual reader, no subjects could be more disconnected than rhetoric and mathematics. The language of demonstration and proofs measures an attitude of mind that values the apodictic and axiomatic while marginalizing, if not ignoring, the efforts of rhetoric. Chaim Perelman drew attention to this divide in his critique of the Cartesian ideal that detached the self-evident from the human sphere, wherein questions arise that mathematicians would consider foreign to their discipline.1 To consider numbers themselves as a source of evidence is part of what is at stake when mathematics is exposed as a human activity. Schiappa takes what Perelman abandoned and claims it as rhetorical territory. “In What Ways Shall We Describe Mathematics as Rhetorical?” answers the question in fertile ways (as subsequent papers show). The rhetorical turn of recent decades involves the rhetorical nature of mathematics on different fronts: “(1) the rhetoric of mathematics, understood as the persuasive argumentative use of mathematics; (2) rhetoric in mathematics, understood as the argumentative modes of persuasion found in written proofs and arguments throughout the history of mathematics; and (3) mathematical language as rhetorical, a sociolinguistic approach to the language of mathematics,” an approach supported by recent writings of Thomas Kuhn (33). In the first case, mathematics serves as evidence in an argument, increasing the persuasiveness of a claim. The second case refers to the argumentative and stylistic modes of persuasion found in proofs, a feature of the history of mathematics. The final case finds its motivation in the work of rhetoricians like Richard Weaver and Kenneth Burke,2 for whom all symbol use is rhetorical including that of mathematics. Mathematics is a language like others and with its own reasoning patterns operating in the discourse community of mathematicians. Schiappa illustrates each of these rhetorical aspects of mathematics with examples and bolsters their importance with argument, including a detailed discussion of the work of Kuhn. This, before taking a particularly interesting turn into ethnomathematics and the differences in how mathematics is conceived and used across cultures.Four of the papers in the collection make explicit reference to Schiappa's account and draw part of their stimulus from his distinctions; and the other analyses can be read through the lens of one or more of his distinctions, whether the papers are historical in nature or deal with contemporary questions. In the opening paper, and beyond their Introduction, the book's editors, James Wynn and G. Mitchell Reyes, open some of the relevant discussions by exploring relationships between rhetoric and mathematics. They reinforce their belief that the volume offers a timely and coordinated effort to explore the intersections of these two fields. In Schiappa's distinctions they find the appropriate routes into the subject matter. They trace the historical division between the fields, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, whose system of argument offered little overlap between rhetoric and mathematics, through to the uneven attention directed by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (not so much, although the authors’ reading of quasi-logical arguments suggests something) and Burke (quite a bit, with the explicit inclusion of mathematics as a symbolic means of communication). This reinforces the importance of rhetoric in mathematics, and much of Wynn and Reyes’ closing analyses confirm this.Two papers pursue the themes of the volume into the field of economics. Catherine Chaput and Crystal Broch Colombini explore the persuasive role of mathematics at work in the metaphor of the invisible hand. And G. Mitchell Reyes provides a detailed investigation of the 2008 financial crisis through a case study of the mathematical formula known as the Li Gaussian copula. As Reyes writes: “Unraveling this copula reveals the constitutive rhetorical force of mathematical discourse—its capacity to invent, accelerate, and concentrate economic networks” (83). The story is long and far too complex to be detailed here. But the study rewards the reader with an understanding of just how traditional rhetorical modalities (like analogy and argument) connect to the rhetorical modalities of numeracy (like abstraction and commensurability) to generate something new (114).Likewise, Chaput and Colombini draw from the traditions of rhetoric in exploring the metaphor of the invisible hand. Their concept of particular focus is energeia, the power or force that activates potential. One of the theses of the analysis is that “the metaphor of the invisible hand regulates the energetic force of economic arguments” (62), and they track the metaphor accordingly, from the work of Adam Smith to that of John Maynard Keynes, where mathematics gains a more central place in economic discussion, and on to Milton Friedman's “positivist mathematical economics” (66). Through these and further analyses, the paper successfully supports the argument that capitalism's force (energeia) emerges in part from the historical developments of the mathematization of the invisible hand.The last paper of Part 2, by Andrew C. Jones and Nathan Crick, weaves together the mathematical reasoning of Charles Sanders Peirce and the detective fiction of Edgar Allen Poe, specifically the Dupin trilogy that includes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The discussion identifies similarities between Poe's forensic analyst and Peirce's mathematician, offering a further case of rhetoric in mathematics. Like Burke in the earlier paper, Peirce is a thinker who understands rhetoric as the effective communication of signs—although I would not want to be taken as suggesting similarities between Burke and Peirce beyond this—and this would apply to all signs, including the mathematical. Poe's detective Dupin further illustrates Peirce's method of abduction, and Jones and Crick take us through the steps involved, from hypothesis to confirmation (while also using the wrong turn of the real case behind “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” to show how abductive reasoning can fail).Part 3, on mathematical argument and rhetorical invention, begins with Joseph Little's adoption of Schiappa's taxonomy for his study of the Saturnian account of atomic spectra, the most technical paper in the collection. That said, the historical case study of Hantaro Nagaoka underlying the discussion is quite accessible. The investigation of atomic spectra begins with a puzzle involving different appearances under different conditions. Little addresses responses to this by looking at rhetoric in Nagaok's mathematics, specifically his use of an analogy between the behaviour of material in Saturn's rings and that of atoms in what is known as the Zeeman effect. Little then analyzes the rhetoric of Nagaoka's mathematics, showing that “a mathematical equation can function indexically, symbolically, and qualitatively in a given case without taking on a computational role (164). Finally, he completes the Schiappian analysis with an account of Nagaoka's mathematical language as rhetorical in the debate that ensued between Nagaoka and the mathematical physicist G.A. Schott.Jeanne Fahnestock's paper, “The New Mathematical Arts of Argument: Naturalists Images and Geometric Diagrams,” completes Part 3. The study takes its place among Fahnestock's meticulously wrought accounts of rhetorical thinking in the history of science.3 She plunges the reader immediately into a discussion of the depiction of scallops in Martin Lister's publications of 1695. Illustrated with original drawings from the account, the rhetorical importance of image reproduction combined with geometrical ways of seeing diagrammatically is shown to underlie arguing in sixteenth century natural philosophy to an extent “that is difficult to appreciate from a twenty-first century perspective that separates the mathematical and the verbal” (174). Fahnestock believes these features underlie arguing because, unlike today, grounding all disciplines (including mathematics) was dialectic in the form of a general art of argumentation. The dialectic in question is Philip Melanchthon's Erotemata dialectics, a work which Fahnestock has just translated into English (Fahnestock 2021). This is a dialectic in which mathematics plays a detailed role, and the paper proceeds to provide a history of this work that blends naturally into a deeper history of the argumentative use of diagrams. Her conclusions point to how, through geometrically controlled images. mathematical ways of viewing the natural world issued in today's “mathematically constructed world” (204).The final two essays comprise Part 4, and both deal with the role of mathematics in education. James Wynn's “Accommodating Young Women” explores some of the gender biases in the way mathematics is taught but more specifically provides a lengthy case study of the rhetorical devices used by TV star and math scholar Danica McKellar to turn middle school girls to the study of mathematics through her book Math Doesn't Suck. This involves an interesting application of epideictic rhetoric to a contemporary subject of concern, and the strategies used are both traditional and innovative. Essentially, McKellar strives to modify the image of mathematics, and Wynn's study of her attempts is both fascinating and instructive.The final paper in the collection, Michael Dreher's “Turning Principles of Action into Practice,” studies the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM) rhetoric in reforming mathematics education. Two of Schiappa's categories come into play here: rhetoric of mathematics and in mathematics. Built on a historical account of philosophies of mathematics education, and incorporating several pertinent anecdotes, Dreher reveals the successes and failures of the NCTM's persuasive attempts to counter the idea that mathematical ability is inherent in only few and instead promote wide success in students’ mathematical achievement. It is a challenge that continues, and Dreher makes clear the difficulties still to be faced.This is, in sum, an eclectic set of papers gathered around a few common agreements and unified by a deep conviction of the importance of challenging any vestiges of the traditional belief that rhetoric and mathematics occupy different, even competing, spheres. The stand-out paper, testified to by the importance accorded it by many of the other studies in the book, is Schiappa's. One could say that it is worth the price of the book, but that would be unfair to the many other fine pieces of scholarship collected here.The observant reader will also have noted that much of the forgoing discussion refers to rhetoric and mathematics, while the title of the volume speaks of arguing. In fact, the attention to argumentation is pervasive, and this book takes its place among a recent appreciation of the role of mathematics in argumentation,4 while answering the kinds of dismissive critiques we once witnessed from skeptics like Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont,5 who attempted to maintain the rhetoric/mathematics gap by suggesting that those who crossed it (at least from one direction) were unknowledgeable interlopers. It was one of Schiappa's opening insights that “If we replace the word “rhetoric” with “argument” . . . we find considerable recent interest in “mathematical argumentation” as a social and pedagogical practice” (43). And, as I have noted, this is repeatedly corroborated in this highly recommended book.

The impact of Cicero's writings on Western political philosophy, political communication, political ethics, and civic action is incalculable. His authority in rhetoric and philosophy was nearly unquestioned in the Middle Ages, but Petrarch's discovery of his letters revealed an apparent disconnect between the lofty sentiments expressed in his writings and his own political actions. The Renaissance preference for things Greek and for theory over practice did not replace Cicero but favored Plato and Aristotle. Political philosophers tied to powerful princes preferred the political expediency of Tacitus. Cicero's rhetorical advice remained foundational, but his political ethics and theory seemed muddled and naïve.Gary Remer's Ethics and the Orator joins an ongoing reassessment of Cicero's contributions to the traditions of politics, rhetoric, and ethics from antiquity to the present. It impressively links these three areas more tightly than before with a new and well-argued understanding of Ciceronian rhetoric and politics. Key to this understanding is Remer's appreciation for the situational nature—through decorum and prudentia—of Ciceronian ethics and politics. He then sheds new light on the political theories of Niccolò Machiavelli and Justus Lipsius. Finally, Remer extends Cicero's notions of advocacy and conversation to modern ideas about representative and deliberative democracy.Through a close reading of De Oratore, Remer shows a new understanding of Ciceronian political theory that deserves consideration by classicists as well as political theorists. Most important, he treats seriously Antonius's arguments for feeling the emotions one desires to persuade an audience to feel (2.189–90). Contrary to the dismissive attitude, in both ancient and modern times, that this makes the orator akin to an actor because he simulates “true” feelings, Remer demonstrates Cicero's consistent emphasis on the audience's expectation of this quality in an orator. The good politician is ethically compelled to observe the sensus communis in action and argument.Remer makes another excellent contribution in his reading of an important passage in De Officiis on the four personae. Cicero and other theorists understood that tension between moral and utilitarian ends might arise in the politician's obligations to argue and act. Remer sees this tension less in Cicero because Cicero understands moral actions as contingent on the specific role (persona) a political actor plays in a particular situation. He emphasizes Cicero's analysis of morality according to four personae a person assumes in any situation. These are: “(1) the role common to all humans as rational beings, (2) the persona nature assigns to persons individually, (3) the role dictated by chance or circumstance, and (4) the persona we choose for ourselves in deciding “who and what we wish to be, and what kind of life we want” (67).Apparent moral conflicts are resolved for politicians by the rhetorical notion of decorum, where social consensus and “the common good” govern political action. Remer focuses on situations that pose an “existential threat” to the state (Cicero in the Catilinarian crisis; Lincoln in the Civil War), where the analogy holds well. In such cases the politician's highly visible obligations must be grounded in decorum, prudentia, and the responsibility to act according to social expectations.In the middle section of the book, Remer applies his insight on Ciceronian decorum and prudentia to recent debates about Ciceronian influence on Machiavelli and Lipsius. Machiavelli famously rejects Cicero's claim that what is good (honestum) must also be useful (utile), and vice versa, declaring that they are often irreconcilable and the prince must choose the useful over the good. Recent studies of Machiavelli have declared his position more “intellectually honest” and “practical” than Cicero's. Remer carefully dissects the texts to show again that Cicero's notion of the honestum and utile are governed by his rhetorical commitment to decorum. Although Cicero maintains the utmost commitment to morality and claims that morality itself is universal, the same morality does not exist for all people and in all places. Machiavelli's inflexible Christian morality is a universal morality, yet Machiavelli abandons it. Cicero's understanding of the tensions between honestum and utile is no less intellectually coherent than Machiavelli's, and his commitment to moral goodness makes him more useful as a model for modern politicians.Remer then addresses Lipsius's adoption of a “mixed prudence” that allows a ruler to practice deceit to achieve a necessary end. This is considered a rejection of Ciceronian prudence for Tacitus's political realism, as part of a general trend away from Ciceronian and toward Tacitean political models. Remer, however, through close attention to Lipsius's comments on Cicero's Letters, contends that Lipsius remains a Ciceronian but adapts Cicero's theory to his own changed political and religious conditions. Although Lipsius prizes the honestum over the utile, unlike Machiavelli, he follows Tacitus in seeing that they can be flexible. Remer links this significant move to Lipsius's condition of living under and supporting monarchal rule. Another change is that the political morality Lipsius advocates is expected of a ruler, not of a politician or a statesman. This last change is important, for the Roman statesman is merely an advocate for the common good and does not have an official position to maintain. Lipsius's good ruler, on the other hand, directly governs all subjects and is also responsible for maintaining his rule, even in difficult situations that may call for expediency over moral correctness. Remer makes an important argument for considering Lipsius's changes as appropriate adaptations of Ciceronian theory according Cicero's own notion of decorum. Remer also reconciles the “Ciceronian” versus “Tacitean” readings of the early and later works of Lipsius, showing him to be more consistently Ciceronian than previously thought.Remer's third section addresses the potential for Ciceronian decorum and prudentia to relate to modern ideas of political representation and deliberative democracy. Although modern ideas of representation and representative government appear to have no clear analog to classical political theory, Remer finds a possible link in Cicero's claim that the politician is a procurator rei publicae. Under Roman law, a procurator represented in court a client who was unable to argue his or her case due to age, gender, ability, or status. Because it is understood that the procurator represents the client's interests, Remer equates his responsibility to that of a modern “trustee-delegate,” with the attendant expectations of accountability, fiduciary responsibility, and moral responsibility to the client's interests. Unfortunately, the idea of the procurator under Roman law does not easily yield these modern notions. The orator's aim of “the common good,” which obligates him to consider the benefits to all—especially his client—when arguing his position, still does not make him “representative” of those people in political decision making. The history of the Roman Republic demonstrates this well. Without this connection, the links to to Burke, Mill, and the authors of The Federalist that Remer argues for are weak, as Remer himself admits. Although modern notions of political representation may not have their true roots in ancient theory, Remer shows there may be an opportunity for discovering important similarities as well as differences.In the final chapter, Remer seeks to connect Ciceronian sermo (“conversation”) with the ideal political discussion needed for deliberative democracy. He also examines the different ideas of and emphasis on “deliberative” found in Cicero and in current political thought. He asks an important question: “Why did Cicero view deliberative oratory, and not conversation, as the main genre for politics?” (182). As in the previous chapter, Remer's close reading of the Ciceronian texts causes him to miss the forest for the trees. Specific passages defining sermo and the genus deliberativum yield convenient academic definitions, but they obscure Cicero's practice and real contribution. In Remer's defense, this is a shortcoming of Ciceronian scholarship in general. Cicero's practice in his dialogues is to use sermo, the conversational style of discussion, as a model for negotiating important political issues of the day. In the turbulent decade of the 50s, De Oratore instantiates a model of reasoned political deliberation by respected leaders who were willing to die soon for their political beliefs. Such deliberation about the proper role of the statesman was the essence of Ciceronian conversation.Ethics and the Orator is an important reassessment of Ciceronian thought and a significant contribution to understanding Cicero's impact on the development of Western political theory. It deserves serious attention by all interested in the intersection of ethics, rhetoric, and politics from antiquity to the present. Gary Remer's careful reading of major political theorists in their historical contexts restores to view the ethical foundations of the Ciceronian tradition and suggests how continued engagement with Cicero's texts might offer new models of political leadership.

AbstractMayor Hubert Humphrey’s “Sunshine of Human Rights” address, delivered to the 1948 Democratic Convention, is universally acknowledged to be a great speech. Historians and biographers credit it as the major reason why the party adopted a strong civil rights plank and committed itself to the struggle from that point forward. Yet rhetorical critics have generally ignored the speech. In this essay, I argue the rhetorical force of the address is best explained through the concept of copia, or an abundant style. Humphrey’s rhetorical extravagance, in turn, suggests that critics ought to develop a new appreciation for this ancient rhetorical concept.

Abstract The key public health officials in the United States have been criticized for their work in the Ebola outbreak of 2014–15 by citizens, public officials, and health scholars from multiple disciplines. There are numerous grounds for these complaints, but underlying many of them was the perception of “failed leadership” that is here traced in substantial part to the embodiment of a positionality based in a presumed logos-based power instead of an ethos-based relationship between public health expert and public. Because any leader’s public ethos is dependent on the cultural ethos of audiences who promote them to leadership, this essay combines the Aristotelian topoi for ethos (goodsense, goodwill, goodness) and contemporary redefinitions of ethos as cultural-level phenomena (either “dwelling places,” ideologies, or ethical and cultural codes) to conceptualize ethos as the activation, rebuilding, or maintenance of relationships among different social positions: publics and institutions. The complexities of the Ebola epidemic—with its national and international dimensions and its partially faulty scientific grounding—make visible the predisposition toward positional gaps between publics and public experts regarding interests (eunoia) and goods (arête), with concomitant difficulties for the sharing of practical wisdom (phronesis). Aristotle was correct that such gaps cannot be bridged by logos, and the pervasive insistence on more logos as corrective therefore may contribute to public mistrust of all expertise.

Abstract On November 18, 1999, Texas A&M University (TAMU) experienced profound tragedy when the famed Aggie Bonfire collapsed, killing 12 students and injuring 27 others. This essay examines the rhetorical dynamics of the TAMU Bonfire Memorial and explores how it navigates the tension created when a constitutive symbol is implicated in a moment of tragedy. Specifically, we use this case to explore how memorials help shape perceptions of victim agency in commemorative form. As we argue, the memorial taps into resonant modes of public reasoning—including temporal metaphors, Christian theology, and campus tradition—to imply the tragic outcome of the 1999 collapse had cause beyond human or institutional control. Our analysis of the Bonfire Memorial illustrates the importance of commemorative agency and, in particular, how eliding victim agency can limit epideictic encounters that might foster a sense of present and future engagement on unreconciled issues.

Abstract This essay traces how Ronald Reagan’s invocation of Lenny Skutnik in his 1982 State of the Union address inaugurated a new generic norm for the president’s annual message to Congress. We argue that the invocation of a “Skutnik” enables presidents to display—both rhetorically and physically—the civic ideals they wish to laud, the national issues they deem important, and policy proposals they want to advance. When U.S. presidents honor individual citizens and seat them in the House Gallery before the nation and the world, these “Skutniks” fuse the judicial, epideictic, and deliberative characteristics of the State of the Union address. Abstract values and complicated policy agendas are simplified—and vivified—before the eyes. The body of the “Skutnik,” we argue, is particularly persuasive because it offers a physical representation of the overall body politic, a living, breathing metaphor testifying that the state of the union is, in fact, strong.

Book Review| September 01 2017 Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication. By Mari Lee Mifsud. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2016; pp. xi + 186. $25.00 paper. Michele Kennerly Michele Kennerly Penn State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (3): 557–560. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.3.0557 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Michele Kennerly; Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 September 2017; 20 (3): 557–560. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.3.0557 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2017 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract Drawing on stasis theory, this essay explores how the debate frame functions within U.S. journalism. Using the news coverage of Marissa Mayer’s coinciding pregnancy and promotion to Yahoo! CEO and the reportage of Hillary Clinton’s upcoming grandchild during the 2016 precampaign as case studies, I develop a two-part argument. First, by analyzing the rhetorical mechanisms within this media debate, I demonstrate how the debate frame makes facts themselves infinitely debatable, thereby stagnating this public debate at the stasis of fact. This ultimately perpetuates the “having it all” debate—and its sexist assumptions. Second, I consider the escape routes out of this dominant discourse, analyzing how arguments maneuver beyond the stasis of fact to consider policy reforms regarding women in the workplace.

Abstract This essay examines an early alternative to polling, Mass-Observation (M-O), that dramatically reported on the nuances, contradictions, and passions of public opinion during some of the most extraordinary times in British history. Between the Abdication Crisis of 1937 and the start of World War II, M-O’s combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, along with its emphasis on the cultural context of public opinion, produced a richer, more textured, and more deliberative rhetoric of public opinion than the Gallup poll’s survey techniques. In the process, M-O foreshadowed many of today’s scholarly trends, including the reflexive turn in social research, increased skepticism about the knowledge claims of science, and the emergence of more public scholarship.

Abstract President Ronald Reagan’s June 6, 1984, “Address on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day” is one of his most celebrated speeches, and yet no critical assessment of the address exists in rhetorical scholarship. In this article, I examine this speech as a deictic epideictic address, or a speech in which the rhetor uses the physical place, the immediate scene/setting, and the assembled audience as evidence to commemorate the past and chart a clear course for the future. Through this analysis, I argue that Reagan’s speech at Pointe du Hoc is exemplary because it relies on rhetorical vision and deixis to connect a past moment to the present, and in so doing, invites the audience to participate in the discourse emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I conclude by suggesting that a deictic approach to rhetorical criticism offers scholars a vocabulary to describe how speakers can “point” or refer to the physical and material elements of a speech setting as evidence for their argument.

Abstract In the immediate aftermath of the Tucson, Arizona, shootings in 2011, controversy erupted over the role, if any, that Tea Party rhetoric had played in inciting Jared Lee Loughner’s rampage. Especially controversial was Sarah Palin’s video, “America’s Enduring Strength,” which denied that this rhetoric was responsible and, in fact, celebrated it as quintessential free speech. This essay makes two related arguments. First, although context encourages audiences to expect political self-defense, Palin’s video is neither deliberative nor forensic but epideictic: a celebration of abstract values so severed from circumstances that Palin et al. become heroically, purely virtuous, while those who dare raise the question of responsibility that is central to deliberation (“who, or what, is to blame, and what, then, is to be done?”) become vicious. However, this move is obscured because Palin’s version of free speech simultaneously inhabits the prevailing, and limited, social and legal understanding of the First Amendment. Hence, we also argue that a consequentialist framework for free expression is less suited to revealing the video’s troubling rhetoric of free speech than is a constitutive framework, such as has been proffered by some scholars of hate speech. To the extent that the consequentialist framework dominates constitutional jurisprudence and public understanding, however, “America’s Enduring Strength” also manifests America’s enduring problem in coming to grips with Tucson and other mass shootings.

Abstract This article explores questions about “civility” in the 2012 election. Through an analysis of media discussions raising the term, four themes are constructed focusing on the limitations of civility discourse. While seeking to preserve the best that civil orientations afford, I argue that adding a deliberative approach to such discourse addresses moments when civil appeals appear to be most limited. This essay finds that working between civil and deliberative constructs provides an instructive perspective for understanding the workings of and possibilities for public discourse during situations when civility rhetoric is typically raised. Relative to civil communication—and associated concepts such as dialogue and advocacy—specific norms, benefits, examples, and implications of a deliberative rhetorical vision are charted for problem-solving, public policy contexts.

Abstract Although hailed by historians and political scientists as a pivotal moment in the reestablishment of U.S.-Sino relations, President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China has received little attention from rhetoricians. The toasts and speeches Nixon presented during his trip are important rhetorical artifacts as they illustrate the intricate relationship between diplomatic and epideictic rhetoric. Nixon adroitly employed epideictic diplomatic rhetoric during his 1972 trip to convey diplomatic aims and accomplish deliberative objectives. In so doing, he created a new, positive definition of U.S.-Sino relations, which rhetorically bridged the ideological differences that had separated the nations for more than two decades.

Abstract Abraham Lincoln’s 1842 Temperance Address can be understood as an act of cultural criticism delivered in epideictic form in which the young politician demonstrated his leadership ability by presenting his political philosophy. Lincoln exploited the capacious indeterminacy of meaning afforded by the discourse of the flourishing temperance movement to address indirectly problems plaguing the American republic, namely incivility and slavery. Offering only hushed praise for Washington, Lincoln silenced the slaveholding founders so that the sensibilities of a new generation of men could be heard. Lincoln constructed a Whig manhood grounded in ideals of entrepreneurialism and restraint that demonstrated his fitness to lead his party and the Second American Revolution.