Advances in the History of Rhetoric Jan 2014

Escaping the Voice of the Mass/ter: Late Neoliberalism, Object-Voice, and the Prospects for a Radical Democratic Future

Barbara A. Biesecker ; William Trapani

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the founding logics of late neoliberalism actively mitigate against a radically democratic future. By calling attention to the invocatory drive which is responsible for effecting the Symbolic order’s interpellative address, the article makes the case that Lacan’s retheorization of desire, the drives, and/as jouissance opens the way toward an ontologically grounded conception of radical political agency and rhetorical intervention whose abiding ethical injunction is to “imagine there’s no Publics!”

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2014-01-02
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2014.886926
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Topics
multilingual writers voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Allen (2015)
    Troubled Freedom, Rhetorical Personhood, and Democracy’s Ongoing Constitution
    Advances in the History of Rhetoric

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Flannery (2001)
    The Passion of Conviction: Reclaiming Polemic for a Reading of Second-Wave Feminism
    Rhetoric Review
Also cites 8 works outside this index ↓
  1. Arditi (1999)
    Polemicization: The Contingency of the Commonplace
     ↗
  2. Dean (2002)
    Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy
     ↗
  3. Dolar (2006)
    Voice and Nothing More
     ↗
  4. Greene (2005)
    Lost Convictions: Debating Both Sides and the Ethical Self-Fashioning of Liberal Citizens
    Cultural Studies  ↗
  5. Gunn (2007)
    Gimme Tongue (On Recovering Speech)
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  6. Rose (1996)
    Inventing our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood
     ↗
  7. Rose (1999)
    Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought
     ↗
  8. Žižek (1996)
    ‘I Hear You with My Eyes’; or, The Invisible Master
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 7 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Mar 2026
    Charismatic Leadership Communication: A Finnish Perspective ↗
    Lauri Tapio Louekari
    qualitative research multilingual writers voice and style affect and writing
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 2026
    Increasing Literacy on the Scams Targeting Latines: Generative Artificial Intelligence, Digital Technologies, and the Latine Community ↗
    Gabriel Lorenzo Aguilar
    artificial intelligence technical communication multilingual writers voice and style
  3. Communication Design Quarterly Dec 2025
    Conversation Design: The Evolving Paradigm in Technical and Professional Communication ↗
    Nadya Shalamova; Gustav Verhulsdonck
    qualitative research multimodality technical communication professional writing multilingual writers voice and style
  4. Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2025
    “No Todo Lo Que Pintan Es Real”: Feminista Pláticas toward Speculative Civic Literacies in the Borderlands ↗
    Rita Kamani-Renedo
    translingualism multilingual writers voice and style
  5. Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2025
    Dreaming beyond the Classroom: Exploring Youth Imagination, Civic Praxis, and Relational Pedagogy in Schools ↗
    Lauren Leigh Kelly; Semaj Eric Skillings; Abigail Osorio
    multilingual writers voice and style