The Long Speech: Rhetorical Abundance in Circulation

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes excessively long speeches in order to argue that circulation naturalizes rhetorical processes that govern meaning within texts. In our view, abundant acts of address unsettle dominant models of speech and circulation, presenting an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between rhetorical forms and circulatory transfigurations. We focus on Strom Thurmond’s twenty-four-hour filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s 1927 speech to the Turkish Parliament, which lasted thirty-six hours over six days. We bring together these otherwise unrelated long speeches to outline three fictions of text and circulation: textual unity, speaker persona, and implied audience. We argue that these fictions stand in for the excessive address in circulation and, in turn, forms of circulatory abbreviation naturalize rhetorical constructions internal to the speech. In this way, we offer a rhetorical account of circulation that connects textual processes to circulatory forms.

KEYWORDS:

• Circulation
• copia
• filibuster
• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
• Strom Thurmond
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

We thank Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, whose repeated (albeit cryptic) suggestion to write something on “the long speech” over a decade ago has grown into the present essay. We are also thankful to Sara VanderHaagen, our anonymous reviewers, and Jacqueline Rhodes for insightful feedback along the way.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Subsequent references to Thurmond’s speech in the Congressional Record cite page numbers only.

² When multiple senators are brought into a colloquy, the Congressional Record notes the nested yields with comments such as, “During the delivery of Mr. Goldwater’s speech while Mr. Thurmond had the floor” (16282).