Participatory Critical Rhetoric

Michael Middleton is assistant professor of argumentation and public discourse in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.Aaron Hess is assistant professor of rhetoric at Arizona State University at the Downtown Phoenix campus.Danielle Endres is associate professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.Samantha Senda-Cook is assistant professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication Studies and affiliated faculty with the environmental science and sustainability programs at Creighton University.

• DedicationAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1.Theorizing Participatory Critical Rhetoric2.The Politics of Participatory Critical Rhetoric3.An Embodied Critical Presence4.From Context to Field in Participatory Critical Rhetoric5.Participants and PerspectivesConclusion

Since its inception in ancient Greece, rhetoric has been inseparable from public life. Born of the polis, where orality had not yet ceded its eminence to literacy, rhetoric developed as a verbal art in response to exigencies inevitable in urban communal affairs ruled by citizens through more or less deliberative processes. Little wonder then that one finds Aristotle’s formulation of rhetoric as one of technique (techne), in contradistinction to poetics, which is concerned with pure making (poiesis) as reflected in the Attic drama or tragedy. Participatory Critical Rhetoric is a timely addition to the time-honored tradition of Western rhetorical scholarship. Reflective of a time when rhetorical perspective is proving to be as salutary as any discipline in the humanities and social sciences, this book brings the study of rhetoric to the cusp of 21st-century social theories and criticism in general. It does so—and this is the collection's most distinguishing feature—by updating rhetorical studies with such research tools as participatory observation, interview, and related qualitative methods. Well organized, clearly written, and rich in ethnographic insights, this book will be a useful guide for scholars interested in recapturing the rhetors’ voices, unavoidably muffled by dominant media and conventional documentation. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.