Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics

by Jonathan Alexander (editor), Susan C. Jarratt (Editor), Nancy Welch (Editor)

What forces bring ordinary people together in public to make their voices heard? What means do they use to break through impediments to democratic participation?  Unruly Rhetorics is a collection of essays from scholars in rhetoric, communication, and writing studies inquiring into conditions for activism, political protest, and public assembly. An introduction drawing on Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler explores the conditions under which civil discourse cannot adequately redress suffering or injustice. The essays offer analyses of “unruliness” in case studies from both twenty-first-century and historical sites of social-justice protest.  The collection concludes with an afterword highlighting and inviting further exploration of the ethical, political, and pedagogical questions unruly rhetorics raise. Examining multiple modes of expression—embodied, print, digital, and sonic— Unruly Rhetorics points to the possibility that unruliness, more than just one of many rhetorical strategies within political activity, is constitutive of the political itself.

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2018

About the author

Jonathan Alexander is a writer and podcaster living in Southern California. The author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books, he has been called one of “our finest essayists” (Tom Lutz, award-winning writer and founding editor of LARB). Jonathan is also Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.

Reviews

[Elizabeth G]

Alexander, Jarratt, and Welch curate a collection that understands democracy's true engine: not civil discourse, but the unruliness that breaks through when redress fails. The Rancière and Butler theoretical framework proves essential, exploring conditions under which ordinary assembly becomes necessary rather than optional. What distinguishes this scholarly gathering is the historical range, twenty-first-century case studies in conversation with past justice movements, demonstrating that unruliness constitutes the political itself rather than merely serving as strategy. The multiple modes examined embodied, print, digital, sonic honor protest's evolving vocabulary without privileging novelty over effectiveness. At 336 pages, this is substantial inquiry rather than manifesto, ethical and pedagogical questions raised in afterword inviting continued exploration. For readers seeking rhetoric that acknowledges suffering and injustice beyond deliberative compromise, this offers the possibility that disruption is democratic participation's most authentic form. A rigorous, necessary intervention.