Although Ronald Reagan’s preternatural oratorical skills made him an obvious choice for scholarsh... more Although Ronald Reagan’s preternatural oratorical skills made him an obvious choice for scholarship in the fıelds of communication, history, psychology, and political science, the last several years have seen an explosion of renewed scholarly interest in the Reagan legacy. This has been due, in part, to the resurgence of American conservativism after the 2008 presidential election and the rise of the Tea Party movement in themidterm elections of 2010. This revival in Reagan scholarship has also been aided by the release of almost 60,000 pages of his presidential papers in 2002, as well as papers released following his death in 2004. Consequently, Reagan scholars have a tremendous amount of newprimary sourcematerial to consider as they assess his legacy. TobyGlennBates’s newbook,TheReaganRhetoric: History andMemory in 1980s America, seeks to utilize the new papers to understand howReagan was able to present a simple rhetorical style and a constant vision of the world to a country that was unsure about its role in the world. Following the tumult of the war in Vietnam, the scandal of Watergate, and the failed presidencies of Ford and Carter, Reagan’s rhetoric structured a consistent worldview that seemed sincere and inspired confıdence in his predictability as a president in an unpredictable world. To understand how Reagan’s consistency built his ethos as a speaker, Bates applies Pierre Nora’s notion of “sites of memory” andMaurice Halbwachs’s notion of “collective memory” across three case studies: Reagan’s 1980NeshobaCounty Fair speech, his Vietnam rhetoric, and his statements on the Iran-Contra Affair. Bates approaches these case studies as a “cultural and social historian of the period” (5). As a historian ofmemory, Bates hopes to create “a bridge between the various perspectives that have so far dominated
and rightfully admires Fannie Lou Hamer, her work avoids the conceit of hagiography. Instead, in ... more and rightfully admires Fannie Lou Hamer, her work avoids the conceit of hagiography. Instead, in the book’s deft analysis of texts and history, Hamer’s life and her speeches emerge as a mediator of politics and principles, individual pain and the concerns of a community. In so doing, this book crafts an understanding of Hamer that can serve not only as an exemplar of individual courage but also as acknowledgment of and a goad to collective responsibility for social change. In A Voice that Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement, Brooks analyzes a complex weave of public speeches, archival sources, historical accounts, and interviews to appreciate and understand the development of a seminal voice in the rhetoric of social change in the United States. This work is a major accomplishment and a substantial contribution to the literatures of black civil rights rhetoric and rhetorical studies more generally.
ABSTRACT This essay examines the importance of decolonization theory/practice outside of Latinx a... more ABSTRACT This essay examines the importance of decolonization theory/practice outside of Latinx and indigenous literatures to understand how the African diaspora has produced rhetorical and philosophical interventions that have been understudied and ignored. The books reviewed all contribute to understanding the limitations of Western, white humanism through the concepts: Black reason, the undercommons, racial liberalism, the idea of the spill, and ontological terror. These texts function as entrees into a deep excavation of the limits of Kantian freedom and Rawlsian justice that recenters anti-Blackness as an animating force of governmentality (particularly governmental structures and regimes that enforce possibilities of life and death), rhetorical invention, and philosophical engagement.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
Chapter 6 examines how the absence of hope and the collapse into black pessimism were driven by t... more Chapter 6 examines how the absence of hope and the collapse into black pessimism were driven by the exposure of white liberalism’s collaborations with anti-black political rhetoric through the language of “law and order,” through the expansion of the FBI’s harassment and surveillance of Black Power activists, and through the expansion of mass incarceration. Using Huey Newton’s writings, this chapter charts how revolutionary suicide operates both as a Black Power meme as a well as a repository of feelings about black Being in a colonial state where blacks have been denied both thinking and feeling as avenues of expression. With specific focus on the rhetorical form of the eulogy, this chapter describes how Newton’s revolutionary suicide is an attempt to reconcile assassination and repression with possibilities for black agency through what Corrigan calls “necromimesis,” but it demonstrates how little room there was for black activists to politically maneuver by 1971 as the nation consolidated racial feelings around law and order politics and new conservatism.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
This chapter discusses the Kennedy administration’s emotional repertoire since it set the tone fo... more This chapter discusses the Kennedy administration’s emotional repertoire since it set the tone for youth dissent for the decade. Corrigan examines the co-constitutive nature of hope and despair in the postwar period to understand how these competing political feelings expressed generational and racialized disputes about the nature of the polis, the uses and abuses of power, the role of political institutions in guaranteeing social and political equality, and the role of dissent as an emotional sphere of public discourse. Using John Kennedy’s speeches, Arthur Schlesinger’s writings on Kennedy, and Norman Mailer’s responses, Corrigan suggests that much of the black struggle in the United States has been aimed at producing new political feelings that worked both in tandem and against those being cultivated by the white establishment during the Kennedy years.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
In Black Feelings, Corrigan traces the surging optimism of the Kennedy administration through the... more In Black Feelings, Corrigan traces the surging optimism of the Kennedy administration through the Black Power era’s dynamic and powerful circulation of black pessimism to understand how black feelings were a terrain of political struggle for black meaning, representation, and agency as black activists navigated the physical violence and psychological strain of movement disappointment, particularly with liberals (both black and white). Black Feelings demonstrates how racial feelings emerged, ebbed, flowed, disappeared, and re-emerged as the Long Sixties unfolded and finally ended. Black Feelings investigates how politicians, activists, and artists articulated the relationship between feeling black and black feelings to chart the affective energies that animated and troubled liberalism’s tropes of progress, equality, exceptionalism, perfection, and colorblindness. Black Feelings pays special attention to hope, hopelessness, impatience, brotherhood, rage, shame, resentment, disgust, contempt, betrayal, and melancholy and metaphors like the “powederkeg” that helped propel the affective racial landscape in the Long Sixties. Consequently, Black Feelings maps how black intellectuals described, animated, located, solicited, and projected feelings that shaped their political affiliations and their rhetorical strategies in opposition to dominant constructions of white feelings.
This chapter provides a rhetorical analysis of Live From Death Row (1995), Death Blossoms (1997),... more This chapter provides a rhetorical analysis of Live From Death Row (1995), Death Blossoms (1997), and All Things Censored (2000), three of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s essay compilations since July 2, 1982, when he was convicted of the first-degree murder of Officer Danny Faulkner and sentenced to death by Judge Alberto Sabo. All three books were published from death row at SCI/Greene Correctional Facility, where Abu-Jamal remained until 2011. This chapter examines how Abu-Jamal’s use of the Black Power vernacular marshals the testimony of black intellectuals and his skills as a professional journalist to build his ethos as a Black Power leader, despite the use of the term “cop killer” to circumscribe his penetrating observations about mass incarceration. Where Rap Brown’s interventions into the Black Power vernacular often center on his aggressive rhetorical style (the bad badman), Abu-Jamal’s use of the vernacular centers much more on journalistic observation (the moral badman) as he finds n...
While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politic... more While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politics in the Long Sixties, their structure is recursive. That is, the (positive and negative racial) feelings that undergird racial liberalism did not stop emerging and receding after law and order campaigns destroyed civil rights and Black Power organizing in the mid-70s. Nowhere is this clearer than in the entrance and disappearance of the so-called “Obama coalition” in 2008 to elect Barack Obama as the first biracial/black president in U.S. history. In considering how hope continues to be inextricably linked to rage, contempt, and despair, this brief conclusion considers hope as an ironic discourse of liberalism, particularly as it is racialized. The birth of Afro- pessimism as a coterminous discourse with what we now call the “post-racial” Obama coalition is important because it demonstrates how black feelings in the Long Sixties continue to shape national political discourse, demonstrat...
Although Ronald Reagan’s preternatural oratorical skills made him an obvious choice for scholarsh... more Although Ronald Reagan’s preternatural oratorical skills made him an obvious choice for scholarship in the fıelds of communication, history, psychology, and political science, the last several years have seen an explosion of renewed scholarly interest in the Reagan legacy. This has been due, in part, to the resurgence of American conservativism after the 2008 presidential election and the rise of the Tea Party movement in themidterm elections of 2010. This revival in Reagan scholarship has also been aided by the release of almost 60,000 pages of his presidential papers in 2002, as well as papers released following his death in 2004. Consequently, Reagan scholars have a tremendous amount of newprimary sourcematerial to consider as they assess his legacy. TobyGlennBates’s newbook,TheReaganRhetoric: History andMemory in 1980s America, seeks to utilize the new papers to understand howReagan was able to present a simple rhetorical style and a constant vision of the world to a country that was unsure about its role in the world. Following the tumult of the war in Vietnam, the scandal of Watergate, and the failed presidencies of Ford and Carter, Reagan’s rhetoric structured a consistent worldview that seemed sincere and inspired confıdence in his predictability as a president in an unpredictable world. To understand how Reagan’s consistency built his ethos as a speaker, Bates applies Pierre Nora’s notion of “sites of memory” andMaurice Halbwachs’s notion of “collective memory” across three case studies: Reagan’s 1980NeshobaCounty Fair speech, his Vietnam rhetoric, and his statements on the Iran-Contra Affair. Bates approaches these case studies as a “cultural and social historian of the period” (5). As a historian ofmemory, Bates hopes to create “a bridge between the various perspectives that have so far dominated
and rightfully admires Fannie Lou Hamer, her work avoids the conceit of hagiography. Instead, in ... more and rightfully admires Fannie Lou Hamer, her work avoids the conceit of hagiography. Instead, in the book’s deft analysis of texts and history, Hamer’s life and her speeches emerge as a mediator of politics and principles, individual pain and the concerns of a community. In so doing, this book crafts an understanding of Hamer that can serve not only as an exemplar of individual courage but also as acknowledgment of and a goad to collective responsibility for social change. In A Voice that Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement, Brooks analyzes a complex weave of public speeches, archival sources, historical accounts, and interviews to appreciate and understand the development of a seminal voice in the rhetoric of social change in the United States. This work is a major accomplishment and a substantial contribution to the literatures of black civil rights rhetoric and rhetorical studies more generally.
ABSTRACT This essay examines the importance of decolonization theory/practice outside of Latinx a... more ABSTRACT This essay examines the importance of decolonization theory/practice outside of Latinx and indigenous literatures to understand how the African diaspora has produced rhetorical and philosophical interventions that have been understudied and ignored. The books reviewed all contribute to understanding the limitations of Western, white humanism through the concepts: Black reason, the undercommons, racial liberalism, the idea of the spill, and ontological terror. These texts function as entrees into a deep excavation of the limits of Kantian freedom and Rawlsian justice that recenters anti-Blackness as an animating force of governmentality (particularly governmental structures and regimes that enforce possibilities of life and death), rhetorical invention, and philosophical engagement.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
Chapter 6 examines how the absence of hope and the collapse into black pessimism were driven by t... more Chapter 6 examines how the absence of hope and the collapse into black pessimism were driven by the exposure of white liberalism’s collaborations with anti-black political rhetoric through the language of “law and order,” through the expansion of the FBI’s harassment and surveillance of Black Power activists, and through the expansion of mass incarceration. Using Huey Newton’s writings, this chapter charts how revolutionary suicide operates both as a Black Power meme as a well as a repository of feelings about black Being in a colonial state where blacks have been denied both thinking and feeling as avenues of expression. With specific focus on the rhetorical form of the eulogy, this chapter describes how Newton’s revolutionary suicide is an attempt to reconcile assassination and repression with possibilities for black agency through what Corrigan calls “necromimesis,” but it demonstrates how little room there was for black activists to politically maneuver by 1971 as the nation consolidated racial feelings around law and order politics and new conservatism.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
This chapter discusses the Kennedy administration’s emotional repertoire since it set the tone fo... more This chapter discusses the Kennedy administration’s emotional repertoire since it set the tone for youth dissent for the decade. Corrigan examines the co-constitutive nature of hope and despair in the postwar period to understand how these competing political feelings expressed generational and racialized disputes about the nature of the polis, the uses and abuses of power, the role of political institutions in guaranteeing social and political equality, and the role of dissent as an emotional sphere of public discourse. Using John Kennedy’s speeches, Arthur Schlesinger’s writings on Kennedy, and Norman Mailer’s responses, Corrigan suggests that much of the black struggle in the United States has been aimed at producing new political feelings that worked both in tandem and against those being cultivated by the white establishment during the Kennedy years.
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
In Black Feelings, Corrigan traces the surging optimism of the Kennedy administration through the... more In Black Feelings, Corrigan traces the surging optimism of the Kennedy administration through the Black Power era’s dynamic and powerful circulation of black pessimism to understand how black feelings were a terrain of political struggle for black meaning, representation, and agency as black activists navigated the physical violence and psychological strain of movement disappointment, particularly with liberals (both black and white). Black Feelings demonstrates how racial feelings emerged, ebbed, flowed, disappeared, and re-emerged as the Long Sixties unfolded and finally ended. Black Feelings investigates how politicians, activists, and artists articulated the relationship between feeling black and black feelings to chart the affective energies that animated and troubled liberalism’s tropes of progress, equality, exceptionalism, perfection, and colorblindness. Black Feelings pays special attention to hope, hopelessness, impatience, brotherhood, rage, shame, resentment, disgust, contempt, betrayal, and melancholy and metaphors like the “powederkeg” that helped propel the affective racial landscape in the Long Sixties. Consequently, Black Feelings maps how black intellectuals described, animated, located, solicited, and projected feelings that shaped their political affiliations and their rhetorical strategies in opposition to dominant constructions of white feelings.
This chapter provides a rhetorical analysis of Live From Death Row (1995), Death Blossoms (1997),... more This chapter provides a rhetorical analysis of Live From Death Row (1995), Death Blossoms (1997), and All Things Censored (2000), three of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s essay compilations since July 2, 1982, when he was convicted of the first-degree murder of Officer Danny Faulkner and sentenced to death by Judge Alberto Sabo. All three books were published from death row at SCI/Greene Correctional Facility, where Abu-Jamal remained until 2011. This chapter examines how Abu-Jamal’s use of the Black Power vernacular marshals the testimony of black intellectuals and his skills as a professional journalist to build his ethos as a Black Power leader, despite the use of the term “cop killer” to circumscribe his penetrating observations about mass incarceration. Where Rap Brown’s interventions into the Black Power vernacular often center on his aggressive rhetorical style (the bad badman), Abu-Jamal’s use of the vernacular centers much more on journalistic observation (the moral badman) as he finds n...
While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politic... more While the tensions between white hope and black despair were a dynamic that characterized politics in the Long Sixties, their structure is recursive. That is, the (positive and negative racial) feelings that undergird racial liberalism did not stop emerging and receding after law and order campaigns destroyed civil rights and Black Power organizing in the mid-70s. Nowhere is this clearer than in the entrance and disappearance of the so-called “Obama coalition” in 2008 to elect Barack Obama as the first biracial/black president in U.S. history. In considering how hope continues to be inextricably linked to rage, contempt, and despair, this brief conclusion considers hope as an ironic discourse of liberalism, particularly as it is racialized. The birth of Afro- pessimism as a coterminous discourse with what we now call the “post-racial” Obama coalition is important because it demonstrates how black feelings in the Long Sixties continue to shape national political discourse, demonstrat...
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Papers by Lisa Corrigan