The transmission of ACT UP's movement histories is indispensable to the potential for what Jose Esteban Munoz calls "queer futurity," or "a temporal arrangement in which the past is a field of possibility in which subjects can act in the present in the service of a new futurity." Roger Hallas argues that ACT UP's material and visual archive alone…

The 25th anniversary of the founding of ACT UP provides a moment to reflect on the group's unquestionably profound effects on the management of HIV/AIDS, the queer community, the history of social movements in this country, and even the development of queer theory in the academy. But it should also encourage individuals to consider the ways in…

This essay explores Barack Obama's invocation of the Exodus during his 2008 presidential campaign. It argues Obama's turn to Exodus, his rare embodiment of Joshua, and his renewal of the American covenant nicely addressed major rhetorical problems that he faced. Of equal importance, his campaign oratory opens an important line of inquiry into the…

We are still coming to terms with the legacy of Randolph Bourne. Although he died at the age of 32 just as the United States was cheerfully entering the First World War under the banner of "democracy," the words he penned in an unfinished essay still resonate in the American social conscience: "War is the Health of the State." This maxim, once…

Elizabeth Cady Stanton has been celebrated for her astute rhetorical contributions to woman's rights advocacy and highly criticized for her racist and elitist sentiments about citizenship and the franchise. Although there appears to be a discontinuity between Cady Stanton's commitment to (sexual) equality and her racism/elitism, this tension is…

As a conceptual term, "counterpublic" serves scholarship best when contributing to a critical-theory project, which means that particular constellations of materiality and ideology may bolster some calls for counterpublicity while gainsaying others. This may be investigated by examining how a text upholds or betrays an advocate's values, seeking…

The logic of political economy depends on a domestic metaphor, using the "oikos" or household as a model for the "polis." Historically, this metaphor has imagined citizens as the children of a paternal state. However during the 2008 housing crisis, this metaphor was turned upside down, depicting citizens as the parents of infantile state…

Popular discourse and advocacy efforts characterize homelessness as a social problem bound by the present-centered concerns of physical affliction and material deprivation. Wayne Powers's documentary film "Reversal of Fortune" exemplifies this tendency by performing a "social experiment" to investigate how giving a homeless man $100,000 would…

While Michel Foucault's "technologies of the self" are useful in explaining the convergence of liberalism and bio-politics, they fail to account for the appeal of juridical mechanisms that administer the conventions of bio-political control. A productive site from which to explore this convergence is provided by the "mall curfew," a bio-political…

The "twisted cyber spy" affair began in 2010, when Google was attacked by Chinese cyber-warriors charged with stealing Google's intellectual property, planting viruses in its computers, and hacking the accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In the ensuing international embroglio, the US mainstream press, corporate leaders, and White…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post-Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power…

This essay draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American Dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism. The essay then details how Barack…

Argues that the rhetorical action of Edmund Burke's classic defense of political parties is its inducement to see that, by interpreting political culture as he does, reader and author collaborate in the recovery of public virtue. (RS)

Discusses John Stuart Mill's nineteenth century treatise and reveals that it embodies the tenets of a sophisticated theory of argument. Makes clear the implications of that theory for contemporary rhetoric. (JMF)

Considers the United States Constitution a "characterological" document that motivates the image-based politics characteristic of contemporary confirmation controversies. Suggests that this motive results in the embodiment of ideology in the characters who dominate American public life. Cites the confirmation debate regarding Thurgood…