Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public

This essay interrogates “conversation,” “dialogue,” and the language of therapy as framing devices for various public deliberative processes in the 1990s and since. Although “conversation” and “dialogue” are often trumpeted as a means to restore civility, egalitarianism, and community into the public sphere, this essay argues that these communication modes, coupled with the language of therapy in which they frequently have been couched, are problematic as paradigms for conflict and problem resolution on public issues. The essay argues, first, that a conversational model for deliberation may impede rather than further democratic goals, and, second, that conversation may function

Wil Linkugel and Gifting 101

Wil Linkugel was many things, among them a fabled storyteller. Given the chance to get in the last word—a comment I trust would yield his winning, wide grin—I return his favor by beginning with my own Wil origins tale. With his beloved wit, he might dryly point out that I am a starring fıgure in places in the Wil Linkugel narrative. But, in truth, he plays both the leading roles and a vast cast of supporting ones throughout—in the truest meanings of such words. With a dutiful spoiler alert, the basic plotline of the brief essay that follows is this: Gifting—gift-receiving, gift-giving, and gift-circulating—are key themes about Wil Linkugel as a person, colleague, and award-winning public address teacher and scholar. All of these roles were cut from the same bolt of charity

Colin Powell\u27s Life Story as a \u27Good Black\u27 Narrative

The versions of Powell’s life examined in this chapter contain two overarching features ethnographers claim are means by which immigrant blacks work to accrue “good” black status. First, their emphasis on Powell as the son of industrious Jamaican immigrants comports with the common practice ethnographers locate among second-generation black immigrants of consciously telegraphing their ethnic heritage as a means of “filtering” themselves for the dominant culture so that they can ward off downward social mobility still linked to a black racial identity in the United States. The inclusion of ancestry in life stories by political hopefuls is not in itself remarkable, but the Powell stories so conspicuously emphasize his distinctive black heritage that they suggest a peculiarly potent symbiotic relationship between its utility both for Powell the “candidate” and for the dominant culture. Second, Powell’s “superior” black narrative endorsed and enacted the strategy of racial “exiting” rather than of “voice” to effect social entry or, to use Steele’s terms, the strategies of “bargaining” for white racial innocence rather that “challenging” it. Many American blacks have long gravitated toward collective political “voice” to redress racial inequities, but some immigrant blacks—particularly those with strong ethnic identities—have favored individual strategies for mobility designed to elude the stigma of stereotypical “inferior” blackness. Steele contends that because whites yearn for a clear racial conscience, the most accepted and, therefore, successful blacks are not racial “challengers” but racial “bargainers,” those blacks willing to grant “white society its innocence in exchange for entry into mainstream” by saying, in effect, “I already believe you are innocent (good, fair-minded) and have faith that you will prove it”; black challengers, by contrast, annoy by confronting white society with the goad, “If you are innocent, then prove it,” thereby holding white innocence captive until some ransom is paid. Thus, racial bargaining accommodates “exit” symbiotically: individual blacks escape the taints of blackness while members of the dominant culture escape the taints of racism

Miss America Contesters and Contestants: Discourse About Social “Also-Rans”

Although feminism, of course, emerged out of the actual personal experiences of discrimination and other forms of subordination, ameliorating such obstacles required and requires a collective politics, most identifiable in liberal feminism’s focus on equality of opportunity in the public domain, such as Title IX or the push for the ERA I described. Whatever Debra Barnes’s individual achievements, those obviously neither did have nor could have had bearing on the eventual opportunity of young women to participate in intercollegiate athletics, as I did, or to make the legal reproductive decisions occasioned by Roe v.Wade. As Dow argues, the mobility or “the exercise of agency by individual women does not substitute for nor even necessarily contribute to the subversion of patriarchy or the expansion of choices for women as a group.” Moving beyond liberal feminism, socialist and radical feminism, as examples, also critique persistent economic gender disparities or expose the myriad ways in which female subordination is deeply woven into the fabric of social life, whether it be in instances of domestic violence I mentioned previously or in a beauty-obsessed culture exemplified by the Miss America pageant. Like a number of others during the early years of the second wave, I somewhat naïvely assumed as an undergraduate that strides occasioned by liberal feminism would automatically quickly translate into more far-reaching social alterations, such as the elimination of the Miss America pageant

Radical Labor in a Feminine Voice: The Rhetoric of Mary Harris \u27Mother\u27 Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Two women in particular, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, earned stature as labor movement legends. Jones persists as an icon for contemporary champions of progressive causes. Separated in age by nearly six decades, both gained reputations for their “leather-lunged” and militant oratory, their disarming fearlessness, and their uncanny talent for captivating the minds and hearts of audiences regardless of sex or ethnicity. Some observers have linked the pair through what Marx termed “the feminine ferment” of the movement. “The fiery example of Mother Jones had one conspicuous follower,” note Lloyd Morris, “Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

Jane Addams: Spirit in Action By Louise W. Knight

The common temptation to perceive greatness as imprinted at birth, however, is skillfully disabused in Louise Knight’s meticulous, insightful,and often poignant biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, which traces the complicated odyssey of a well-heeled idealist—initially conflicted by her material privilege, disappointed by gender-codes confining her ambitions, and haunted by familial ghosts and duties—into the pantheon of U.S. political idols. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Knight weaves into Addams’s arresting tale her early baptism into public speaking, writings that shaped her expression in public forums, rhetorical strategies she employed, and platform failures as well as successes. A prolific speaker, Addams penned ten books despite an exhausting schedule and the pressures of persistent ill health and complex familial duties. Knight’s biography is a tour de force and merits space on the shelves of anyone, scholar and citizen alike, interested in mining national progress and identity through tales of individuals who devoted their lives to charting a new national course

Looking Under the Hood and Tinkering with Voter Cynicism: Ross Perot and “Perspective by Incongruity”

This essay examines Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential bid as a comic catalyst for a reinvigorated view of civic responsibility. Despite the Texas maverick’s political naiveté and penchant for miscalculation, his very presence in the campaign reanimated Americans’ conception of grassroots democracy. By examining important and previously unexplored distinctions between planned and unplanned incongruity, we probe the means by which Perot invited consideration of alternative political perspectives and offered an appealing glimpse into a dormant, more deeply held democratic ideal

“From the Eye to the Soul”: Industrial Labor’s Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and the Rhetorics of Display

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was among the U.S. industrial labor movement’s savviest practitioners of visual politics to champion human rights for workers. This article focuses on two key features of Jones’s exploitation of the power of “the eye” for persuasive ends: first, was her keen appreciation of the rhetorical potency of the camera as an emerging technology with differing force for varied audiences, and second, was her trademark spectacles ritualizing rebellion, showcasing workers’ resolve, and generating publicity. To mine these visual features, this essay situates them within two significant historical episodes: the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913-14, especially the Ludlow Massacre, and the Children’s Marches of 1903 she led to lobby for child labor reforms