College English Jul 2014

Sinners Welcome: The Limits of Rhetorical Agency

Steve Parks

Abstract

“Sinners Welcome” explores the relationship between current community partnership models and the political rhetoric that often surrounds them. Taking up the frequent invocation of Cornel West’s “prophetic pragmatism” in such partnerships, this article investigates what it might mean to understand this term as a call to work for actual systemic justice for those most oppressed by the current political moment. To make this concrete, the article discusses a community partnership project that resulted in an activist organization being created by local residents in response to a large-scale redevelopment effort in the neighborhood. Once created, this organization became the site of a concerted countereffort to defund and discredit such partnership work. It is this tension between community partnerships and activism, between prophetic pragmatism’s theoretical goals and its actual practice, that represents a fundamental choice within English studies. Ultimately, the article poses the question of how far our field is willing to go in the name of a “transformative politics.”

Journal
College English
Published
2014-07-01
DOI
10.58680/ce201425460
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Topics
modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism public rhetoric editorial matter
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Flower (2020)
    The Consequences of Engaged Education: Building a Public Case
    Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
  2. Parks et al. (2019)
    Of Rights Without Guarantees: Friction at the Borders of Nations, Digital Space…
    Literacy in Composition Studies

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