Reconsidering Obama

Reconsidering Obama

Reflections on Rhetoric

Edited by Robert E. Terrill

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin

Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Terrill, Robert, editor, author.

Title: Reconsidering Obama: reflections on rhetoric / edited by Robert E. Terrill.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2017.

Series: Frontiers in political communication; vol. 34 | | ISSN 1525-9730

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017012054 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3472-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4331-3471-5 (paperback: alk. paper) | | ISBN 978-1-4331-4394-6 (ebook pdf)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4395-3 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4396-0 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Obama, Barack——Oratory. | Obama, Barack——Language.

Rhetoric——Political aspects——United States.

Communication in politics——United States——History——21st century.

Discourse analysis——Political aspects——United States.

Classification: LCC E908.3 .R43 2017 | DDC 973.932092——dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012054

DOI 10.3726/b11797

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the "Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie"; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

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Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the editor

Robert E. Terrill is Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received his PhD from Northwestern University in 1996. His work has been recognized by the Rose B. Johnson Award, the Kohrs-Campbell Prize, and the Marie Hochmuth-Nichols Award.

About the book

Perhaps no other presidential candidate or sitting president has attracted as much attention from rhetorical critics as Barack Obama. Much of this work was conceived and written during Obama’s initial presidential campaign, or relatively early in his two terms in office. This book provides rhetorical critics an opportunity to revisit their published work on Obama in light of events that have occurred since its publication. In each chapter, these eminent critics begin by summarizing the analysis and conclusions in their original essays on Obama, and then reflect on their previous conclusions, revising or extending them in response to developments since the publication of the original work. The chapters provide a glimpse into the inventional strategies of practicing critics and into some of the ways that that critical insights may evolve over time. Scholars rarely have an opportunity to publish essays that reflect on their own previous work, even though few resources can be of greater use to both beginning critics and to established scholars seeking to continue to hone and reflect on their critical practice. This book, then, makes an important contribution not only to the existing literature on the 44th president of the United States, but also and perhaps most significantly to the study of the art and craft of rhetorical criticism.

“Robert E. Terrill, himself an astute critic of African American discourse, has assembled here fourteen superb critics, all of whom have written fine essays on Senator, candidate, and/or President Obama’s rhetoric. Terrill has offered them an enticing invitation to revisit their earlier critical works on Obama’s rhetoric; all have responded with penetrating chapters that are certain to reward careful readings by scholars and students. What a wonderful collection!” —Carole Blair, Professor of Rhetorical Studies, Department of Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; co-editor of Critical Questions: Invention, Creativity, and the Criticism of Discourse and Media

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Robert E. Terrill

Chapter One: Rhetorical Charges: Mercurian Figures and Democratic Hope after Obama

Peter Simonson

Chapter Two: A Wrestling of Brothers: (Re)Writing Obama Separately and Together (Again)

David A. Frank and Mark Lawrence McPhail

Chapter Three: Barack Obama’s Neo-Racial Responses to Black Death

Amy L. Heyse and Ebony A. Utley

Chapter Four: Obama’s Rhetoric of Myth and Reason

Robert C. Rowland

Chapter Five: Barack Obama at the Threshold of a New America

Robert L. Ivie and Oscar Giner

Chapter Six: The Once and Future Teleological Discourse of Barack Obama

Richard W. Leeman

Chapter Seven: Testing the Narrative Signature Perspective: The Case of Obama and Health Care Reform

Martin J. Medhurst

Chapter Eight: Losing Patience with an Imperfect President and Imperfect People

Derek R. Sweet and Margret McCue-Enser

Chapter Nine: How Selective Amnesia Brought Us the First Black Socialist President of the United States

Kristen Hoerl←v | vi→

Chapter Ten: A Reflection on the Obama Phenomenon, Our Heroic Expectations, and the Obama Presidency

Jennifer R. Mercieca

Contributors

Selected Bibliography

Index←vi | vii→

Introduction

Robert E. Terrill

Indiana University

Barack Obama has attracted a lot of attention from rhetorical critics. From the moment that he arrived on the national stage, delivering a career-defining speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, through his 2008 presidential campaign, and then through his two terms as president of the United States, Obama, his discourse, and the discourse that has been produced about him, in support of him, and in opposition to him, all have proven to be exceptionally productive for the study of rhetoric.

Obama’s reputation for eloquence accounts for some of this attention, of course. It is perhaps not surprising that scholars who have dedicated their professional lives to the proposition that words matter would be attracted to the oratory of someone who seems to share a similar commitment. Obama possesses a capacity for mobilizing some of the key themes and problematics of U.S. civic culture with a nuance and intensity unusual among contemporary public figures. He addresses common and fundamental tensions—between pragmatism and idealism, tradition and innovation, unity and diversity, freedom and responsibility—but at the same time, the complexities of neither the man, his words, nor the reactions he inspires, easily can be reduced to simplified dichotomies. Though he exudes a famously calm demeanor, he is in many ways a disruptive presence, agitating the public sphere, bringing submerged issues to the surface and making them more readily available for analysis and critique.

Another important reason that critics have been attracted to Obama as a site of study is that their analyses can begin with him and then open out upon an←vii | viii→ exceptionally wide range of topics. Obama can serve as a portal through which a critic might access discourses of race, war, presidentiality, globalization, sustainability, healthcare, coloniality, protest, dissent, or any number of other contemporary public issues. This is a consequence of the fact that rhetorical events happen in response to, and become integral parts of, specific places and particular moments. A statement, image, or object may possess rhetorical potentials in one context that are not realized, or even available, in another. Whether we understand rhetorical acts as produced in response to existing situations, or as calling those situations into existence, or as constituting a symbiotic relationship with the situations within which they circulate, the rhetoric produced by and surrounding Barack Obama bears the imprint of its context. This phenomenon is not limited to Obama, of course, and it is a part of what we mean when we acknowledge that kairos, or timeliness, is fundamental to rhetoric. Rhetoric and public address often have been discounted because they may seem to lack the timeless quality that is attributed to the greatest human arts, but actually it is the context-bound, time-bound quality of rhetoric, its intimate imbrication in immediate goings-on, that imbues it with significance and power.