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Abstract
Inspired by this journal's centennial occasion and John Murphy's call to rhetorical history, I queer his reading of Barack Obama's “turn to the past.” Turning to my own critical past, I revive incipient ideas of contextual twilight, critical liminality, and critical self-portraiture to query the operative rhetorical traditions neither Murphy nor Obama voice, to draw distinctions between making and accounting for LGBTQ history, and to imagine the history Obama might tell were the critic to ask. This historical-critical labor strives to expand the reach and grasp of queering rhetorical studies for the next century of the Quarterly Journal of Speech.
He thanks Barbara Biesecker, for her generous invitation to contribute to this centennial issue, John Murphy, for his essay here and all of his rhetorical history, Karma Chávez, for her thoughtful engagement, and Jeremy Grossman, for his editorial assistance. His partner Scott Rose's encouragement has made all his queer work possible. In 1996, Mr. Rose presented the author with a framed first page of his first essay in this journal, a loving gift that remains, like QJS itself, a worldmaking inspiration.
He thanks Barbara Biesecker, for her generous invitation to contribute to this centennial issue, John Murphy, for his essay here and all of his rhetorical history, Karma Chávez, for her thoughtful engagement, and Jeremy Grossman, for his editorial assistance. His partner Scott Rose's encouragement has made all his queer work possible. In 1996, Mr. Rose presented the author with a framed first page of his first essay in this journal, a loving gift that remains, like QJS itself, a worldmaking inspiration.
Notes
[1] Matthew Breen, “In Obama We Trust,” The Advocate, July 13, 2012: http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/cover-stories/2012/07/13/obama-we-trust, accessed November 7, 2014.
[2] Mark Ivins, Gay Pride N.Y.C., 1976 (New York, NY: Keystone Press Agency, 1976), personal collection of the author.
[3] Frederick Douglass, Oration By Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876 (Washington, D.C.: Gibson Brothers Printers, 1876; Johns Hopkins Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/orationbyfrederi00doug), 1, 7.
[4] The phrase is derived from Kathleen Turner, ed. Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003).
[5] David Zarefsky, “Four Senses of Rhetorical History,” in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, ed. Kathleen Turner (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 29–31.
[6] See John M. Murphy, “Inventing Authority: Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Orchestration of Rhetorical Traditions,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 83, no. 1 (1997): 71–89; John M. Murphy, “The Heroic Tradition in Presidential Rhetoric,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 3, no. 3 (2000): 466–70; John M. Murphy, “Mikhail Bakhtin and the Rhetorical Tradition,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87, no. 3 (2001): 259–77; John M. Murphy, “Barack Obama, the Exodus Tradition, and the Joshua Generation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 4 (2011): 387–410.
[7] John M. Murphy, “Barack Obama and Rhetorical History,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 213–24.
[8] Murphy, “Barack Obama and Rhetorical History,” 221.
[9] Charles E. Morris III and Jason Edward Black, “Preface,” in An Archive of Hope: Harvey Milk's Speeches and Writings, eds. Jason Edward Black and Charles E. Morris III (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), xi.
[10] Richard Socarides, “America's Most Important Gay-Rights Speech?” New Yorker, January 21, 2013, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/americas-most-important-gay-rights-speech, accessed November 8, 2014.
[11] Charles E. Morris III, “Portrait of a Queer Rhetorical/Historical Critic,” in Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse, ed. Charles E. Morris III (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 4.
[12] Charles E. Morris III, “Richard Halliburton's Bearded Tales,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 2 (2009): 141–42. Elsewhere, I issued “a call, an insistence, that rhetorical scholars take seriously sexuality as a chief influence of rhetorical culture, past and present; that the history of GLBTQ discourse must be acknowledged, and engaged, and taught, and written about—in short, circulated—with the same increasingly felt obligation that attends discourses of race and gender in our journals, books, anthologies, bibliographies, classrooms, comprehensive exams, dissertation endorsements, and conference proceedings. Queer movement, in this regard, will be measured by the common usage of the texts archival queers have assembled and articulated. Their useful disposition of those voices must be addressed by developed and sustained scholarly disposition toward them.” Charles E. Morris III, “Archival Queer,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9 (Spring 2006): 148–49.
[13] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at LGBT Pride Month Reception,” June 29, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-LGBT-Pride-Month-Reception/, accessed November 8, 2014.
[14] When referring to specific official acts with a specified acronym, I use “LGBT,” otherwise I deploy my own preferred acronym “LGBTQ.”
[15] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at a Reception for LGBT Pride Month,” June 13, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/13/remarks-president-reception-lgbt-pride-month, accessed November 8, 2014.
[16] See Justin S. Vaughn and Jennifer R. Merceica, eds., The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency (College Station, TX: Texas A& M University Press, 2014).
[17] Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, “Obama's Neo-New Deal: Religion, Secularism, and Sex in Political Debates Now,” Social Research 76, no. 4 (2009): 1227.
[18] Charles E. Morris III, “Contextual Twilight/Critical Liminality: J. M. Barrie's Courage at St. Andrews, 1922,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82, no. 3 (1996): 207–27.
[19] Morris, “Contextual Twilight/Critical Liminality,” 208–9.
[20] David Zarefsky, “The State of the Art in Public Address Scholarship,” in Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric, eds. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1989), 16, 21, 23.
[21] Stephen Lucas in two germinal essays marked and explicated the longstanding methodological struggle in the field over the relationship between history and criticism, as well as the resurgence of Public Address in the 1980s, the latter clarifying from his perspective the distinctiveness of Public Address in hospitable and complementary relations to history and theory. The founding of the Public Address Conference, and the genial revisiting of key questions such as those posed by Zaresky, evidenced this “renaissance.” Stephen E. Lucas, “The Schism in Rhetorical Scholarship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (February 1981): 1–20; Stephen E. Lucas, “The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text and Context in Rhetorical Criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74 (May 1988): 241–60.
[22] It is worth noting that Browne's essay in this once-a-decade symposium on the “state of the art” of rhetorical criticism sought to guard against any disciplinary anxiety regarding critical practice that might have been incited by battles over context waged by the other contributors to this special issue. Stephen Howard Browne, “Context in Critical Theory and Practice,” Western Journal of Communication 65, no. 3 (2001): 330.
[23] Kristan Poirot, A Question of Sex: Feminism, Rhetoric, and Differences That Matter (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 7, 12.
[24] James Jasinski, “Introduction,” in Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, eds. Alan G. Gross and William B. Keith (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 196.
[25] Murphy, “Mikhail Bakhtin,” 265.
[26] Carole Blair, “Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables from Public Places,” Western Journal of Communication 65, no. 3 (2001): 284–85.
[27] For guidance, see E. Patrick Johnson, “‘Quare’ Studies or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother,” Text & Performance Quarterly 21 (2001): 1–25; Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson, eds. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Julie M. Thompson, “On the Development of Counter-Racist Quare Public Address Studies,” in Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse, ed. Charles E. Morris III (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 121–46; Karma Chávez, Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013); C. Riley Snorton, “Marriage Mimesis,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (May 2013): 127–34; Shinsuke Eguchi, Bernadette M. Calafell, & Nicole Files-Thompson, “Intersectionality and Quare Theory: Fantasizing African American Male Same-Sex Relationships in Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom,” Communication, Culture & Critique 7 (2014): 371–89; Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr., Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
[28] Charles E. Morris III, “(Self-)Portrait of Prof. R.C.: A Retrospective,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 1 (2010): 4–42.
[29] Angela G. Ray, “Living and Learning with the Lyceum: A Reflection on Invention,” The Review of Communication 10, no. 3 (2010): 236–48.
[30] As does queer art critic Gavin Butt in observing “those identifications and suspicions not spoken of, ones which might have remained as unarticulated thought but which nevertheless can be credited with animating … sexual meanings.” Gavin Butt, Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 8.
[31] See Sharon Crowley, “Reflections on an Argument that Won't Go Away: Or, a Turn of the Ideological Screw,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 78, no. 4 (1992): 450–65; Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56, no. 2 (1989): 91–111; Dwight Conquergood, “Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,” Communication Monographs 58, no. 2 (1991): 181–94; Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, “Commitment to Telos—A Sustained Critical Rhetoric,” Communication Monographs 59, no. 1 (1992): 48–60; Julia T. Wood and Robert Cox, “Rethinking Critical Voice: Materiality and Situated Knowledges,” Western Journal of Communication 57, no. 2 (1993): 278–87; Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no. 3 (1995): 291–309; Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter, “Disciplining the Feminine,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80, no. 4 (1994): 383–409. One recent attempt to address critical reflexivity as method and politics can be found in the forthcoming volume, Text + Field, edited by Sara L. McKinnon, Robert Asen, Karma R. Chávez and Robert Glenn Howard.
[32] Bernadette M. Calafell, “Rhetorics of Possibility: Challenging the Textual Bias of Rhetoric through the Theory of the Flesh,” in Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods & Methodologies, eds. Eileen E. Schell and K. J. Rawson (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 109. See also Lisa Flores, “Creating Discursive Space through a Rhetoric of Difference: Chicana Feminists Craft a Homeland,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82, no. 2 (1996): 142–56.
[33] Calafell, “Rhetorics of Possibility,” 109. See also Rachel Hall, “Patty and Me: Performative Encounters between an Historical Body and the History of Images,” Text and Performance Quarterly 26 (October 2006): 347–70.
[34] Michael C. Leff, “Commentary: Cicero's Redemptive Identification,” in Critical Questions: Invention, Creativity, and the Criticism of Discourse and Media, edited by William L. Nothstine, Carole Blair, and Gary A. Copeland (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 324.
[35] Leff, “Commentary,” 326.
[36] John M. Murphy, “Review of James T. Kloppenberg, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 2 (2011): 245.
[37] Murphy, “Barack Obama and Rhetorical History,” 214.
[38] Murphy, “Barack Obama and Rhetorical History,” 217.
[39] Arguably one exception is Obama's December 22, 2010 “Remarks by the President at the Signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010”: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/22/remarks-president-and-vice-president-signing-dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal-a, accessed November 12, 2014.
[40] Chris Gall, cover illustration, The Advocate (September 2009), n.p.
[41] Obama, “Remarks by the President at LGBT Pride Month Reception.”
[42] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Human Rights Campaign Dinner,” October 11, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-human-rights-campaign-dinner, accessed November 12, 2014.
[43] Obama, “Remarks by the President at the Signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.”
[44] Obama, “Remarks by the President at the Signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.” Without much labor, Obama and his speechwriters might have conjured historical examples of such gay soldiers. See Randy Shilts, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1993); Jonathan Ned Katz, “A Major Fell in Love with a Boy,” Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago press, 2001), 133–46; Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (New York, NY: Free Press, 1990).
[45] Barack Obama, “Presidential Proclamation—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month,” May 31, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/31/presidential-proclamation-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-pride-mon, accessed November 12, 2014.
[46] “President Obama Celebrates Pride Month,” June 1, 2012, http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/06/01/president-obama-celebrates-pride-month, accessed November 12, 2014.
[47] On queer mnemonicide, see Charles E. Morris III, “My Old Kentucky Homo: Abraham Lincoln, Larry Kramer, and the Politics of Queer Memory,” in Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse, ed. Charles E. Morris III (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 93–120.
[48] John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York, NY: Free Press, 2003), 1, 3.
[49] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at the Medal of Freedom Ceremony,” November 20, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/20/remarks-president-presidential-medal-freedom-ceremony, accessed November 12, 2014.
[50] This is not to gainsay the Obama Administration's outreach to black queer youth. For example, “On February 28, 2011, The White House observed the end of Black History Month with 60 emerging African American LGBT student leaders leaders representing Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU).” But Obama himself did not speak at that gathering. Nor did LGBTQ lives and rights get mentioned in his 2014 speech to boys and young men of color concerning the “My Brother's Keeper Initiative.” Indeed, with rare exception (2013 Morehouse Commencement Remarks and 2011 World AIDS Day Speech), Obama's LGBTQ discourse does not explicitly consider racial difference (or any other, excepting policy specific to gender identity). Monique Dorsainvil, “African American LGBT Student Leaders Winning the Future,” March 4, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/04/african-american-lgbt-student-leaders-winning-future, accessed November 12, 2014; Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on ‘My Brother's Keeper’ Initiative,” February 27, 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/remarks-president-my-brothers-keeper-initiative, accessed November 12, 2014.
[51] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Morehouse College Commencement Ceremony,” May 19, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/19/remarks-president-morehouse-college-commencement-ceremony, accessed November 12, 2014; William Saletan, “Obama's Boyfriend Line,” Slate, May 20, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2013/05/obama_s_morehouse_speech_why_did_he_say_be_the_best_husband_to_your_boyfriend.html, accessed November 12, 2014.
[52] One can imagine another similar prosopopoeic encounter with Leonard Matlovich in Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Remarks of 2010. Less charming, to be sure, and without disparaging the sentimental tale of Andy Lee and Lloyd Corwin, such an encounter with Matlovich, poster boy for all that was wrong with the policy (as well as the government's response to the AIDS epidemic), would have been more fitting, reflexive, redemptive. Rather than Obama's troubling “favorite” anecdotes from survey responses about DADT—“‘We have a gay guy in the unit. He's big, he's mean, he kills a lot of bad guys.’ (Laughter) ‘No one cared that he was gay.’ (Laughter). And I think that sums up perfectly the situation. (Applause)”—he might have meditated on Matlovich's epitaph (on a headstone for a 45-year-old dishonorably discharged gay veteran dead from AIDS): “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” Steve Kornacki, “The Air Force vs. the ‘Practicing Homosexual,’” Salon, December 1, 2010, http://www.salon.com/2010/12/01/matlovich_dadt/, accessed November 12, 2014.
[53] Murphy, “Inventing Authority,” 85.
[54] Barack Obama, “Second Inaugural Address,” January 21, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama, accessed November 12, 2014.
[55] Robert L. Ivie, “Rhetorical Innovations,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no. 4 (1995): 2.