The Public Work of Rhetoric

Citizen-Scholars and Civic Engagement

Edited by John M. Ackerman and David J. Coogan

Reviewed by Jennifer Clifton, University of Texas at El Paso

  • Introduction
  • Rhetoric Revealed
    • Miller - Should We Name the Tools? Concealing and Revealing the Art of Rhetoric
    • Rai - Power, Publics, and Rhetorical Uses of Democracy
    • Bruner - The Public Work of Critical Communication
    • Ackerman - Rhetorical Engagement in the Cultural Economies of Cities
    • Cintron - Democracy and Its Limitations
  • Rhetorical Interventions
    • Condit - Rhetorical Engagements in the Scientist's Process of Remaking Race as Genetic
    • Flower - Going Public--in a Disabling Discourse
    • Coogan - Sophists for Social Change
    • Cushman and Green - Knowledge Work with the Cherokee Nation
    • Grabill - On Being Useful: Rhetoric and the Work of Engagement
  • Remaking Rhetoric
    • Fleming - Finding a Place for School in Rhetoric's Public Turn
    • Juergensmeyer and Miller - Mediating Differences
    • George and Matthieu - A Place for the Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education: "Sending up a signal flare in the darkness"
    • Joliffe - The Community Literacy Advocacy Project: Civic Revival through Rhetorical Activity in Rural Arkansas
    • Jarratt - The Prospects for the Public Work of Rhetoric: A Coda on Codes
  • Conclusion
  • References

Conclusion and Future Directions

Importantly, Ackerman and Coogan’s collection pointed to possible future disciplinary directions, including the need for more work regarding:

  • rhetorics of public life in transnational contexts and transnational cultural economies;
  • concealment, free speech, and their consequences
  • the intersections of critical, digital, and community literacies
  • postmodern identities and loyalties under conditions of cultural and economic globalization;
  • the intersections of deliberation, pragmatism, and power;
  • cross-disciplinary rhetorics informing actionable knowledge in public spheres;
  • the deep distances between our figured and material worlds;
  • the interplay of phronesis and techne;
  • the development of rhetorical expertise in the face of the contingent;
  • the doing and teaching of public rhetoric and productive knowledge making;
  • research methods for rhetorical intervention; and
  • rhetorical invention and intervention capable of transforming symbolic and material realities of public life.

    • The significance of this collection was its consideration of the relationship between the study of rhetoric and down-on-the-ground rhetorical action—where all of our lives are slung between the now and the not yet; where the not yet we may be working toward with others is always a contested fabrication; where the road to that mythological vision is near and far and made in the walking; where walking together is both enough and not nearly even close to enough; where despair is a luxury we cannot afford; and where putting feet to desire is such tenuous, teeth-clinching work. In these paradoxes, The Public Work of Rhetoric staked out and took up some of our most pressing disciplinary questions, showing the public work of rhetoric to be a foibled, sweaty, and altogether human affair. It is not for the faint of heart.