John S. Nelson

The Rhetoric of the human sciences : language and argument in scholarship and public affairs

Opening with an overview of the renewal of interest in rhetoric for inquiries of all kinds, this volume addresses rhetoric in individual disciplines - mathematics, anthropology, psychology, economics, sociology, political science and history. Drawing from recent literary theory, it suggests the contribution of the humanities to the rhetoric of inquiry and explores communications beyond the academy, particulary in womens issues, religion and law. The final essays speak from the field of communication studies, where the study of rhetoric usually makes its home.

Account and acknowledge, or represent and control? On post-modern politics and economics of collective responsibility

Abstract As a practice and a profession, late-modern accounting conceives accountability as representation and control. Post-modern modes of accountability project another practice of accounting that would resist reduction to representation and control. After the fashion of Friedrich Nietzsche, this alternative suggests that accounting “return” to a practical and professional horizon created by such internal goods as narration and acknowledgement. By complementing the economics and politics of representationalism, projects of narration and acknowledgement can gain greater autonomy and integrity for accounting. Especially as accountants address domains outside the modern corporation, these post-modern dimensions of practical accountability become harder to avoid, easier to understand, and better to cultivate.

Rhetoric of inquiry: Projects and prospects

This essay reports the historical and philosophical reasoning behind the rhetoric of inquiry, an interdisciplinary enterprise designed to enhance the relations among the arts and sciences and clarify the actual practice of scholarship.

The ideological connection: Or, smuggling in the goods, Part II

The study of political ideologies and belief systems typically has been focused around the notions of logical and psychological constraint. Originally offered by Philip E. Converse, these have long served American political science as the standard conceptions of the nature of ideological connections.la I shall criticize this logical/psychological constraint distinction for affording neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for ideological connection. On this basis, I shall propose a reinterpretation of the research findings of the belief systems literature. Then pushing beyond criticism to construction, I shall propose an alternative account of ideological connection. This new account has important implications for not only the Converse-inspired study of belief systems, but also the numerous other recent attempts to formulate a more viable conception of ideology.

Stands in Politics

The stand in politics is a major form of current political theory, as it is of all political theory intended for times of trouble. It possesses special characteristics, concerns, and connections to aspects of political life. This essay contrasts the stand to other forms of theory and projects of action. Then it samples stand making and taking among recent political theorists. Stands coalesce into an unusual kind of action, so that theorists making stands may conceive themselves to be key political actors. The essay concludes with prospects for future stand making and taking, including forums other than political theory.

Horror Films Face Political Evils in Everyday Life

Studies of cognition show that Americans get much of their political information from audiovisual media. Therefore, attention to popular films can help us learn how genre conventions communicate politics. The popular genre of horror uses subtexts to help people face political evils in their everyday lives. Many of the evils lately concern the politics of communication, and this is evident in a wide range of horror films, recently including Phone Booth (2003), The Ring (2002), and The Mothman Prophecies (2001).

Film Essay: Conspiracy as a Hollywood Trope for System

Apparently President George W. Bush takes a dim view of Conspiracy Theory (1997), “the weird, noirish tale of a comically paranoid taxi driver (Mel Gibson) who discovers —when the CIA crashes into his life to torture him—that ‘they’ really are out to get him.” Newsweek reports that Bush “didn’t like it—big time. Slow start, confusing plot, just a mess” (Lipper & Fineman, 2003). Social scientists do not always agree with this or any other president, but here they find some common cause. Social scientists scorn conspiracy theory—big time. Likewise, they scoff at the conspiracy politics in popular films. Yet this can lead them, like President Bush, into confusion. Theirs is the fundamentalist mistake. They literalize film conspiracies as accounts of causation. Then they condemn movies with conspiracy plots for pandering implicitly to extremist politics. These films can be colorful and popular, the knock goes, but they remain simplistic, distracting, deeply unrealistic, indeed downright dangerous for American or other audiences. The complaint is that conspiracy films fail to show how complicated, structural, and systemic politics can be. Instead, they arouse the rabble. Thus, many a scholar of politics and communication condemns conspiracy theories and movie conspiracies for their fantasy themes, magical thinking, scapegoating, and similar devices that dupe the insufficiently scientific or politically unsophisticated (Nimmo & Combs, 1980, pp. 86–87, 146). Unfortunately, this misses the Hollywood use of conspiracy as a trope for system. Conspiracy theories strive to expose the shadowy bosses who communicate behind the scenes to pull the world’s strings. They premise that paranoia is unappreciated prophecy: We have secret enemies, and “they” have been scheming (with real success) to get us. Conspiracy movies supposedly enact paranoid fantasies of implausible ties among impossible powers who connive in private to manipulate hordes of ordinary people. Some conspiracy films mystify the actual mechanisms of exploitation and coercion, leaving viewers with “no recognizable enemy” to oppose. Some are said to horrify viewers through “faceless” conspirators so omniscient and omnipotent that resistance seems futile and people become immobile. Most conspiracy movies have “excessively personalized

Introduction Doing Political Theory with Popular Films: Styles in Action in Everyday Life

Popular movies, novels, and television series help make our politics by making our myths. These are the symbolic stories that shape and make sense of what people do.2 It’s easy to see political mythmaking in movies like Argo (2012), Lincoln (2012), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Each concerns historical figures in the official, if sometimes secret, politics of government.3 When we see Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) of the CIA rescuing American diplomats from a hostile Iran, or we see “Maya” (Jessica Chastain) of the CIA tracking Osama bin Laden to his death in Pakistan, we need not see James Bond (Daniel Craig) resurrected in Skyfall (2012) to know that covert operations are back in heroic vogue. When we watch President Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) shaving truths, trading jobs for votes, or otherwise playing gutter-ball to outlaw slavery, none of us misses that the current occupant of the Oval Office has a mighty model for stooping to compromise—and “get things done.”

Conclusion Unsettling Idealism versus Realism: Perfectionism in Two Classics of Neo Noir

Pollock’s point is that Americans long looked to popular cinema for great stars who enact grand lifestyles in events of historical significance on a world stage. This echoed the Hollywood love, at least intermittent, for epics. Yet epics were far from the only genres of popular cinema that grew more engaging with increasing distance from ordinary people in their everyday lives. The desire for distance and contrast came from a popular sense that moving pictures exalt us more as they remove us further from mundane existence. Even in comedies and satires, stardom and spectacle loomed larger, more magical, and altogether more satisfying as they left behind familiar realities in favor of figures that we viewers first idealized then idolized.2 Hollywood glamorized American criminals as gangsters, politicians as statesmen, wars as crusades, westward expansion as manifest destiny, and almost anything at all as musicals. Throughout much of the twentieth century, popular movies were the premier entertainment in America because glimpses of the greats on the big, silver screen could ennoble and inspire us regular folks.

Noir in Paradise: Testing and Twisting Realist Politics

Bearing heavy baggage, Jesse Stone drives cross-country to Paradise, Massachusetts. To Paradise, Stone brings drunkenness that cost him a job with the LAPD, obsession with the wife he has lost to careers and affairs and divorce, grief for his old dog soon to die, resistance to facing his failings and feelings, plus disregard of rules in the way of justice. “Jesse” is from the Hebrew for “wealth.” Is this name an ironic reference to Stone’s baggage; or does it note his talents for survival, detection, and justice? Jesse is played by Tom Selleck, an actor known for tough but sympathetic cops, cowboys, and detectives in dramatic series and movies made for television. As a result, he has even become a corporate representative of CBS Television. Like Charlton Heston before him, Selleck also has become known as a spokesman and board member for the National Rifle Association. They have been similar as heroic, macho figures, although Heston’s career was centered in cinema whereas Selleck’s has focused on television.