RHETORICAL REPUBLIC:
GOVERNING REPRESENTATIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICS
By Frederick M. Dolan and Thomas L. Dumm
Published by the University of Massachusetts Press, 1993



Rhetorical Republic brings together some of the most imaginative theorists from the fields of politics and literature to reflect on how practices of representation in popular culture, the news media, and law have come to constitute the primary instruments of governance in the United States. We argue that today the struggle over the representation of politics is at least as important as the struggle over power as it has traditionally been conceived.

Discussing topics as diverse as Ronald Reagan's confusion of body and mind and its role in the Iran/Contra scandal, the impermanence of the trope of national security, and the prospect for a reembodied liberalism, Rhetorical Republic surveys the American scene from the varied perspectives on offer in the humanities today. The result is an analysis, critique, and prescriptive study of the United States as a postmodern polity in which attention to representation, in the broadest sense of the term, is fundamental to understanding the distinctive qualities of hysteria, fantasy, meanness, and plain lunacy in American politics.

If you would like to order a copy of Rhetorical Republic, click on title for more details.

Rhetorical Republic : Governing Representations in American Politics
Frederick M. Dolan, Thomas L. Dumm; Paperback; $17.95

Rhetorical Republic : Governing Representations in American Politics
Frederick M. Dolan, Thomas L. Dumm; Hardcover; $40.00

"A singularly important contribution. It promises to focus attention on emerging currents within political science, to tie the discipline to larger currents within the humanities and social sciences, and to illuminate important dimensions of American political thought and practice through a series of exceptionally well-written and thoughtful essays."
-- George Lipsitz, University of California

"An excellent resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics."
-- Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii

"fine ... illuminating ... unusually ambitious and coherent ... deserves to be read and taught widely within the fields of both political theory and American politics"
-- Political Theory

"fantastic"
-- Qui Parle
 


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