{"title":"Michel Meyer, What Is Rhetoric? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 250 pp. $35.95 (hardcover), $26.99 (eBook).","authors":"Daniel Ellis","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"219 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474055","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42575807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neither Pistols nor Sugar-Plumbs: The Rhetoric of Finance and the 1720 Bubbles","authors":"W. Herring","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474047","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The first two decades of the eighteenth century saw the rapid growth of financial markets in Paris and London, growth due in large part to the appeal of newly available financial instruments. This essay examines that appeal in rhetorical terms and argues for the importance of conceiving finance rhetorically.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"147 - 162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43582021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trumponomics, Neoliberal Branding, and the Rhetorical Circulation of Affect","authors":"Catherine Chaput","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474051","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article studies Trumponomics as a brand that derives its economic and political purchase from the patterns of affective circulation opened up by the contemporary political economy. Because neoliberalism enables branding to both extract surplus wealth and appropriate surplus affect directly from consumers, it changes the rhetorical terrain. In this new landscape, Trump’s incoherent economic policies fade into the background as the production of his economic brand occupies the foreground. My argument theorizes affect within the labor theory of value, analyzes the Trump brand within that framework, and explores the implications of including affective value within the rhetorical toolbox.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"194 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48143852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From “Incentive Furie” to “Incentives to Efficiency,” or the Movement of “Incentive” in Neoclassical Thought","authors":"R. McDonald","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474045","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Incentives, economists remind us, are foundational to any economy: They include strategies to induce consumers to purchase products, motivate employees to work harder, or invite businesses to new localities. This textbook term, however, has not always been yoked to economic activity per se. This essay traces the history of the term “incentive” in two phases, first, from its origin in the Latin term “incentivum,” referring to “the thing that sets the tune,” and second, from its uptake and concretization by neoclassical economic thought through Jeremy Bentham, Alfred Marshall, and Paul Samuelson. In neoclassical economics, incentives “set the tune” of behavior by compelling rational economic action through the postulates of methodological individualism, equilibration, and utility-maximization. The terminological shift of “incentive” from its poetic origins into economic thought entails that “incentives” become an objective, univocal “thing” that embeds an argument about the dangers of actions that contravene market logics.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"115 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45434430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Energeia, Kinesis, and the Neoliberal Rhetoric of Strategic Default","authors":"C. Colombini","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474050","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recently, rhetoricians have explored the potential of energeia to unfold new understandings of agency and highlight the mutability of rhetorical topoi. This article harnesses such potential to neoliberal rhetorical analysis, examining the “strategic default” debate that dominated the later foreclosure crisis. Tracing the constitution of a moralized binary distinction between intentional and forced default, I argue that the kinesthetic metaphor of “walking away” from underwater houses disciplines consumers while disclosing the latent potentiality for rational actors to abuse their power of choice. To counter this denial of agency, I draw possibilities for resistant practice from de Certeau’s theory of everyday life.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"178 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474050","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44756485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Econo-Rhetorical Presidency and the U.S. Fiscal Situation","authors":"W. Saas","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474046","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay expands James Aune’s theory of the econo-rhetorical presidency to analyze how presidents define the U.S. fiscal situation. By “fiscal situation,” I refer to any rhetorical representation of the federal government’s ability to create and spend money, levy and collect taxes, and issue debt. Through historical analysis of the “balanced budget” topos in presidential discourse, I find that Presidents Carter through Obama tended to define the U.S. fiscal situation in austere terms, with balanced budgets figured as deontological goods unto themselves. I conclude by advocating for increased critical engagement with economic theory, generally, and theories of the U.S. fiscal situation, specifically.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"131 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474046","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42177718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the Dialectic Between Wall Street and Main Street: A Materialist Analysis of The Big Short","authors":"Joshua S. Hanan, Jeffrey St. Onge","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474048","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this essay, we provide a materialist analysis of Adam McKay’s 2015 film The Big Short. We contend that while, on one level, the film appears to be a celebration of several idiosyncratic traders on Wall Street who use rhetorical invention to outwit the industry, on another level, the film can be read as a genealogically informed account of the biopolitical relationship between the oikos and the polis and Main Street and Wall Street. We conclude by advocating for an account of the 2008 financial crisis that is sensitive to the historically overdetermined relationship among rhetoric, politics, and economic power.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"163 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43775800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhetoric and Economics, Analysis and History","authors":"M. Longaker","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1474042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474042","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1980s, Deirdre McCloskey argued that economists should look beyond their mathematical formulas and their positivist methodologies. If “economic style appeals in various ways to an ethos worthy of belief,” then economists should “give up their quaint modernism and open themselves to a wider range of discourse... . [They should] examine their language in action and converse more politely with others in the conversation of humanity” (McCloskey Rhetoric, 11, 167). Much broader than her original “rhetoric of economics,” McCloskey’s recent “humanomics,” asks us to consider cultural as well as economic forces when investigating human prosperity (Bourgeois, 553–559). McCloskey’s humanomics is one example of the rhetoric of economics clearing the way for new scholarly efforts in the social sciences. The articles in this special collection move in another direction, towards rhetorical analysis and historical inquiry. Like McCloskey’s humanomics, the historical inquiry into rhetoric and economics is a worthy sequel to McCloskey’s pioneering efforts. Robert McDonald’s “From “Incentive Furie” to “Incentives to Efficiency,” or theMovement of “Incentive” in Neoclassical Thought,” for instance, rhetorically analyzes works by Jeremy Bentham, Alfred Marshall, and Paul Samuelson. Echoing McCloskey’s rhetoric of economics, McDonald suggests a modest disciplinary conclusion about the rhetorical constitution of economic science. He notes the “poetical” quality of incentives, their “call to act rationally,” and their rhetorically objectified constitution as “the desired object that provides the key to unlocking a universal analysis of social reality” (this issue). But, instead of drawing conclusions about the discipline of economics or rhetoric’s economic function,McDonald asks:What does poetically constituted “incentive” do in our common conversations and our daily deliberations? The “rhetoric of economics” was a critical inquiry, part of the larger Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry that McCloskey and others began (1980) at the University of Iowa. McCloskey’s humanomics is a human science including cultural criticism, philosophical rumination, and statistical formulas. McDonald’s critical analysis of economic arguments is an historical inquiry into the local constitution and the specific function of public discourse. Like McDonald, the authors featured in this special issue share McCloskey’s two key insights. We all agree that economics is rhetorically constituted, and rhetoric is economically effective. But we attend to specific arguments, their rhetorical form, and their historical function.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"108 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1474042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45432320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editor’s Note","authors":"Arthur E. Walzer","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1419742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1419742","url":null,"abstract":"The bouleutêrion (the council house or assembly hall) was the meeting place of the council of citizens in ancient Greece under democracy. The architecture of bouleutêria has been less studied than has the architecture of theaters and religious monuments. The standard study remains William McDonald’s The Political Meeting Places of the Greeks (Johns Hopkins University Press), published in 1943. The study by Christopher Lyle Johnstone and Richard J. Graff that follows here builds on McDonald’s work but analyzes bouleutêria from a distinctly rhetorical perspective: in “Situating Deliberative Rhetoric in Ancient Greece: The Bouleutêrion as a Venue for Oratorical Performance,” they study bouleutêria from the perspective of places of oratorical performance. Theirs is the first study of oratorical sites in ancient Greece that includes both computer-generated reconstructions of the sites, enabling scholars to evaluate sightlines, and technical acoustical analysis, permitting judgments of what was likely heard from particular locations in a particular bouleutêrion. The increased interest in the material conditions of oratorical performances among rhetoric scholars and the uniqueness of Johnstone and Graff’s approach led to the decision to devote virtually this entire issue to their study. The responses to Johnstone and Graff by two scholars, Peter O’Connell, Classics, University of Georgia and author of The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory (University of Texas Press, 2017), and James Fredel, English, Ohio State University and author of Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens: Persuasive Performance from Solon to Demosthenes (Southern Illinois, 2006) complement Johnstone and Graff’s study.","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"1 - 1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1419742","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45737183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Distinctly Rhetorical Space; Eusynoptos and the Greek Council-House","authors":"James A. Fredal","doi":"10.1080/15362426.2018.1419746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2018.1419746","url":null,"abstract":"The original research of Johnstone and Graff on the bouleuteria of ancient Greece and their physical and acoustic features will, I predict, have a significant impact on future work in the history of rhetoric. Of equal importance to me is their gathering together in one easy view the site plans and reconstructions—in some cases three-dimensional reconstructions and interior views—of Greek council houses. Though students of ancient Greek rhetoric will be familiar with the functions of the council house, this will be for most the first opportunity to view this collection of council-house plans and reconstructions in close proximity. This collection and arrangement of images constitute an argument for a deliberate and principled evolution in the architecture of council-houses, from the mid-sixth-century structures at Olympia (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 6–7c) and Athens (Johnstone and Graff, 1a and 1b) to the second-century curvilinear structures at Athens and Miletos (Johnstone and Graff, Figures 17a–21b). Their essay demonstrates nothing less than the invention of a specifically rhetorical space, parallel to the development of deliberative arenas like the Pnyx. We shouldn’t let the current ubiquity of the semicircular, banked theatral area obscure or diminish for us the significance of this invented spatial configuration and rhetorical technology. Today, this form is ubiquitous in lecture halls, movie theaters, playhouses, churches, and assembly halls around the world, but it was for the Greeks a significant achievement and a rhetorical one, as Johnstone and Graff’s essay makes clear. Its underlying purpose was the collection, arrangement, and display of a collectivity—the creation of a people—for mutual regard through political deliberation in service to the city. I mean here to invoke both constitutive rhetoric (Charland) and the social imaginary (Castoriadis). Rhetorical spaces like the council house were instrumental in constituting the polis as an imagined, known, and valued entity. The Greeks, of course, had a name for what Johnstone and Graff have brought together for us. They called something collected and arranged so that it could be easily or clearly seen in one view, eusynoptos. As a result of Johnstone and Graff’s essay, the historical development of the Greek council house as a distinctly rhetorical space becomes eusynoptos. I might then coin","PeriodicalId":38049,"journal":{"name":"Advances in the History of Rhetoric","volume":"21 1","pages":"103 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/15362426.2018.1419746","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43578235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}