Kendall R. Phillips

The spaces of public dissension: Reconsidering the public sphere

The centrality of consensus in contemporary inquiries into society limits our understanding of dissent and contemporary disputation. This paper raises the question of what role dissent plays in contemporary society by interrogating an exemplar of traditional social rhetoric, the public sphere. An examination of the six characteristics of the public sphere suggests that the dominance of consensus has restricted our understanding of contemporary public argument and resistance. The possibility of de‐centering consensus and the public sphere and reconsidering dissension is explored.

A Rhetoric of Controversy.

Efforts to explore the concept of controversy have presumed a relationship between the public sphere and the controversial. The normalizing spatial metaphor of the public sphere, however, provides a limited perspective on the fluidity, multiplicity, and mobility of controversies. This essay suggests an alternative perspective based on the intersection of moments of opportunity and specific sites of discourse. The new perspective is applied to the controversy surrounding the African Burial Ground in New York City.

The Failure of Memory: Reflections on Rhetoric and Public Remembrance

The rapid growth of public memory studies in the field of rhetoric suggests the need to reflect upon the ways in which the practices of rhetoric and the notion of memory intersect. In this essay, I trace the intersection between memory and rhetoric back to the works of Plato and Aristotle. These early works suggest that one reason for attending to memory as a concept was the fear of memorys failure, understood not in terms of forgetting but in terms of misremembering, or remembering differently. Rhetoric is implicated in this concern and the present essay suggests ways in which the practice of rhetoric is involved with concerns over memory, recollection, and remembrance.

The Event of Dissension: Reconsidering the Possibilities of Dissent

Dissent emerges out of unique prior conditions in which the coherence of dominant discourses is momentarily opened for contest. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, these conditions are conceptualized through the internal gaps and contradictions within dominant discourse—spaces of dissension—and the singular historical circumstances of the Event of dissension. The unique possibilities opened up in the Event of dissension include the prospects for a kind of critical contemplation on the conditions of the present, which Foucault defines as thought. The prospects for thoughtful dissent are considered.

Affective Seams in the Discourses of the Present

While none of the essays collected in this volume explicitly cite the work of Michel Foucault, I cannot help but feel his presence lingering in their various projects. Foucault is certainly not the first critic to explore the diverse ways in which social relations are organized, but his attention to the historically specific practices of power and knowledge and his attention to the subtle ways in which discourses of knowledge are constitutive by and constituitive of relations of power fundamentally altered the approaches of most scholars in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. In noting a Foucaultian influence in these essays I mean not so much to suggest their alliance with his philosophical orientation as to observe the ways in which these individual projects also seek to examine historically specific movements of power and knowledge through the careful examination of mediated texts and the kinds of responses they seem to invite. Each of these essays takes up the job of tracing a complex web of discourses and practices, whether in an exploration of online depictions of a decaying urban center (Atkinson & Rosati), of mainstream commercial film (Von Burg), of international journalistic practices (Zandberg), or of contemporary museum exhibitions (Scott & Stout). Perhaps more to the point, it seems to me that each of these essays demonstrates what Foucault describes in the epigraph above. Discourse formations, by which he means the complex set of interrelated discourses, practices, and subject positions that create the conditions for regularity and normalcy, are not as coherent as they may appear. Indeed, in Foucault’s historical perspective, discourses are defined precisely by their incoherence: the multiple layers of contradictions that lie buried both within them and by necessity at their limits. It is, in other words, precisely these

Textual Strategies, Plastic Tactics Reading Batman and Barbie

The material manifestation of the popular culture icons Batman and Barbie are examined in terms of the subjectivity suggested by each. This article argues that the essential manifestation of Batman is as a textual object while the essential manifestation of Barbie is as a plastic object. These two modes of manifestation, in turn, are examined in terms of the cultural positions of domination and resistance they reflect.

Tactical apologia: The american nursing association and assisted suicide

Studies of apologia have typically focused on powerful individuals and institutions responding to charges from equally powerful opponents, the struggles between elites and counter‐elites. This essay argues that apologia may also be a tactic of resistance as subordinate groups answer the charges of superordinate groups. An examination of the American Nursing Associations response to research indicating many nurses had participated in assisted suicides suggests tactical apologias blend various postures of apologia and seek to confuse rather than dispel the accusatory situation.

Disciplining the Devil: a rhetorical history of Tod Browning’s The Devil Doll (1936)

ABSTRACT Critical scholars of media often limit their attention to the final version of a media product without much focus on the production process. In this essay, we encourage more attention to the processes that occur during production with particular emphasis on the development and revision of the script in an approach we call a rhetorical history of the text. Focusing on Tod Browning’s 1936 The Devil Doll, we observe the ways that the studio process systematically disciplined Browning’s initial conception of monstrosity. We note in particular the ways that Browning’s transgressive depiction of race and gender were recast into a more traditional form for the film’s final version.

“The safest hands are our own”: cinematic affect, state cruelty, and the election of Donald J. Trump

For many, the results of the 2016 election felt like an explosion. The election of Donald J. Trump was characterized as “throwing a Molotov cocktail” into the system by both film maker/activist Michael Moore, who opposed Trump, and investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts, who supported him. The vitriolic campaign, which routinely transgressed norms of deliberation and decorum, culminated in an administration that continues shattering expectations, protocols, and long-established policies. The Trump administration seems, in many ways, to be at war with the norms and structures of American governance as it seeks to erase not only the policies of the Obama administration but, apparently, the set of principles that have undergirded American policy since at least Franklin Roosevelt. FDR, more than any other US president, positioned the US Federal government as central to protecting its citizenry against the dangers of the external world. Whether poverty, pestilence, or war, the modern welfare state positioned the government as a bulwark against a world that could at times be cruel and unfair. In just its first year in office, the Trump administration has worked to dismantle this system. Trump has overturned numerous environmental regulations, undermined health insurance provided by the Affordable Care Act, and removed protection for transgender students in public schools, among other actions. These policies are the result of a fundamental shift in orientation toward the federal government, which is now seen not as protection from danger but, largely, as the source of danger. In turn, this sense of danger has provoked widespread, popular anger. The destructive anger embodied by the Trump administration did not arise out of thin air, nor was it an invention of the current resident of the White House. The decade preceding the 2016 election was one in which the broader system of American life came under increasing scrutiny from all ends of the political spectrum. The Tea Party rose to prominence in 2009, calling out the broader system of American federalism for perceived inequities. Echoing Ronald Reagan, the Tea Party insisted that government was not the solution but, instead, the problem. In 2011, the Left joined in this broad questioning of the American system in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement. While diverging on many particular issues, both Tea Party and Occupy shared an overwhelming sense that the systems of American and global life were deeply flawed and corrupt. This angry sentiment was, I will argue, part of a broader shift in the affective structure of American life. As Lauren Berlant has argued, shifts in public policy entail not just