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Abstract
This article explores how Barack Obama's oratory positions “the people” as a site of ongoing rhetorical negotiation regarding national identity, ideology, and potentiality. Like the subjects implicated in Charland's consideration of constitutive rhetoric, “the people” of Obama's rhetoric emerge as the choosers, deciders, and accomplishers of collaborative identity performance. Unlike Charland's subjects, however, Obama's rhetoric of imperfection and dissent positions “the people” as never fully constituted but always engaged in the act of constitution. The people, like the country they constitute, are flawed, never perfect, and always in the process of perfecting.
A previous version of this article was presented at the 2009 WSCA convention. The authors would like to thank Bruce Gronbeck, Chuck Goehring, and the Communication Studies reviewers for their feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
Notes
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 2006), 92.
Barack Obama, “Iowa Caucus Night,” Des Moines, IA. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, January 3, 2008, ¶ 7).
Leonard Pitts, “Words Make the Man,” The Sacramento Bee, February 24, 2008, http://www.sacbee.com/debate/story/732746.html; Peter Applebome, “Is Eloquence Overrated?,” The New York Times, January 13, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/weekinreview/ 13applebome.html
“Hillary Clinton's February 19 Speech,” The New York Times, February 19, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19text-clinton.html, ¶ 2–4.
“TV Ad: Love,” JohnMcCain.com, http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/Player.aspx?guid=d92350b2-784b-4827-80d0-325a020def70 (accessed August 2, 2008).
Michael C. McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61, no. 4 (October 1975): 239–240.
Ibid., 242.
Carol Blair, “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric's Materiality,” in Rhetorical Bodies, ed. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, 23 (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, no. 2 (May 1987): 137.
Kendall R. Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” Communication Monographs, 63, no. 3 (September 1996): 244.
Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 258.
Ronald W. Greene, “Another Materialist Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15, no. 1 (1998): 31.
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 136.
Thomas B. Farrell, “Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 62, no. 1 (February 1976): 5–6.
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 79.
Ibid., 255.
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” Philadelphia, PA. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, March 18, 2008, ¶ 1–2).
Barbara A. Biesecker, “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Différance,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 22, no. 2 (1989): 125.
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 81.
Mary E. Stuckey, “One Nation (Pretty Darn) Divisible: National Identity in the 2004 Conventions,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8, no. 4 (2005): 654.
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 96–97.
R. C. Rowland and John M. Jones, “Recanting the American Dream and American Politics: Barack Obama's Keynote Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 93, no. 4 (November 2007): 434.
Ibid., 427.
Barack Obama, “The American Promise,” Denver, CO. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, August 28, 2008, ¶ 8).
Mark West and Chris Carey, “(Re)enacting Frontier Justice: The Bush Administration's Tactical Narration of the Old West Fantasy after September 11,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 4 (November 2006): 379–412.
Adita Bahtia, “Religious Metaphor in the Discourse of Illusion: George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden,” World Englishes 26, no. 4 (2007): 507–524.
David S. Birdsell, “George W. Bush's Signing Statements: The Assault on Deliberation,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 2 (2007): 335–360.
See the aforementioned Ivie; Herbert W. Simons, “From Post-9/11 Melodrama to Quagmire in Iraq: A Rhetorical History,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 2 (2007): 183–194; and Joshua Gunn, “The Rhetoric of Exorcism: George W. Bush and the Return of Political Demonology,” Western States Journal of Communication 68, no. 1 (2004): 1–24.
Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey, Daniel Klaidman, Eleanor Clift, Michael Hirsh, and John Barry, “Bush in the Bubble,” Newsweek 146, no. 25 (2005): 30–39. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 17, 2010).
Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard, “The Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric,” College English 58, no. 7 (November 1996): 770.
Jeffrey Walker, Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 9.
The speeches, in chronological order, include “The Great Need of the Hour,” “A More Perfect Union,” “Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.,” “Wesleyan University Commencement,” “Memorial Day,” “Apostolic Church of God,” “The America We Love,” and “The American Promise.” All eight speeches are available at http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php
Barack Obama, “The America We Love,” Independence, MO. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, June 30, 2008, ¶ 15).
Barack Obama, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Fort Wayne, IN. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, April 4, 2008, ¶ 14–18).
Barack Obama, “The Great Need of the Hour,” Atlanta, GA. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, January 20, 2008, ¶ 10).
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 17.
Obama, “Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 49.
Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” ¶ 6.
Ibid., ¶ 8–9.
Barack Obama, “Wesleyan Commencement Address,” Middleton, CT. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, May 25, 2008, ¶ 9).
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 84.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 4.
Obama, “Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 7.
Obama, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” (speech, April 4, 2008, ¶ 13).
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 48–52.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 24.
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 37.
Obama, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” ¶ 19.
Ibid., ¶ 13.
Ibid., ¶ 13.
Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” ¶ 44.
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 68.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 20.
Ibid., ¶ 2.
Obama, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” ¶ 13.
Obama, “Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 31 & 34.
Ibid., ¶ 38.
Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” ¶ 60.
Obama, “Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 40.
Barack Obama, “Apostolic Church of God,” Chicago, IL. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, June 15, 2008, ¶ 18).
Obama, “Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” ¶ 9.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 21.
Ibid., ¶ 21.
Barack Obama, “Memorial Day,” Las Cruces, NM. http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php (speech, May 26, 2008, ¶ 18).
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 34.
Obama, “Memorial Day,” ¶ 20.
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 84 & 86.
Obama, “Apostolic Church of God,” ¶ 6.
Obama, “Wesleyan Commencement Address,” ¶ 8.
Ibid., ¶ 18.
Obama, “The Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 2.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 1–2.
Obama, “The Great Need of the Hour,” ¶ 10–11.
Ibid., ¶ 2.
Ibid., ¶ 4.
Ibid., ¶ 5.
Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” ¶ 1.
Ibid., ¶ 2.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 2.
Ibid., ¶ 19.
Ibid., ¶ 24.
Obama, “The American Promise,” ¶ 75.
Obama, “The America We Love,” ¶ 20.
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 280.
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