Robert L Ivie
Biographic Data
| ID | 304982 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert L Ivie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert L |
| FAMILY NAME | Ivie |
| SIGNATURE | IVIE R L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University Bloomington |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2907-0208 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 144 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Recovering the Democratic Value of Public Discourse
The decline of democracy in the US entails the surge of authoritarianism, ascendency of demagoguery, dispersal of the democratic majority, and weakening of public reason. Dissent, envisioned as a rhetorical practice of democratic deliberation, resists authoritarianism by advancing democratic values. Accordingly, this paper examines democracy as a minority voice, explores the deliberative capacity of dissent, and identifies the rhetorical properti…
Introduction
This essay introduces a twentieth anniversary forum reviewing the state of scholarship on communication as a critical/cultural study. It features democratic discourse as a main line of inquiry for pursuing a more just public culture, references relevant critical/cultural scholarship, and notes that forum contributors focus on matters of identity addressed in queer scholarship, including a current shift in the culture wars, and on constructions of…
Dissenting Democratically from Trump’s Toxic Tropes
The discourse of democracy is displaced, and authoritarianism advanced, by Donald Trump’s demagogic trope of racial warfare. Democratic agency is further eroded by images of disease, deployed by both Trump and his critics and contextualised by a viral pandemic. To the extent Trumpism is a rhetorical phenomenon, there is reason to consider its toxic tropes in relation to healthy figures of democratic polity. Democracy itself is a slippery term tha…
Trump’s Unwitting Prophecy
Research Article| December 01 2017 Trump's Unwitting Prophecy Robert L. Ivie Robert L. Ivie Robert L. Ivie is Professor Emeritus of English (Rhetoric) and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (4): 707–718. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.4.0707 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search…
Hegemony, instabilities, and interventions
The special issue of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses on discourses of war and peace, 70 years after the end of World War II, is introduced by discussing war culture as resilient but also unstable and subject to transformation. The special issue features six papers, each a distinct discursive intervention on topics that range from the mythic narrative of US insecurity to strategies of rhetorical bypassing, British colonial nostalgia, margi…
Waging peace
The mythic authority of the warrior, ancient and contemporary, is examined as a rhetorical formation of US war culture subject to transformation in the discourse of military veterans advocating for peace. The incongruity of veteran soldiers opposed to militarism is a point of cultural tension that reveals a resource for altering the language of war from within. The dissenting voices of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War articula…
Hunt the Devil
Enabling Democratic Dissent
Dissent, in its distinctive contribution to democratic practice, neither reduces to protest nor advances toward consensus. It is a double-sided discourse with both a solid footing in public culture and a sharp edge for cutting through political orthodoxies. Rhetorical invention is its dynamic. Dissenters must maneuver, like mythical tricksters, to sustain the vitality of democracy. The viability of their democratic interventions depends on the in…
Hunt the Devil
A critical study of the demonic imagery that has been persistently embedded and codified in America's war culture. The authors examine "the devil myth" in both its past and present iterations and also highlight the counter-myth of the "trickster figure" whose democratic impulses have occasionally succeeded in countering the impulse towards demonization. To unveil the devil myth, the authors identify outward projections of evil onto the faces of A…
Cold War Dissent Revisited
Book Review| March 01 2014 Cold War Dissent Revisited The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970. By Carl Mirra. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2010; pp. ix + 224. $34.95 cloth.Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network. By Sarah B. Snyder. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011; pp. vii +293. $85 cloth; $29.99 paper.Liberty and Justice for All? Rethink…
Response to Dmitri Paranyushkin's text-network analysis of Russian presidential speeches
Discursive democracy and the challenge of state building in divided societies
Current approaches to democratic state building place serious conceptual limits on policy options. A democratic future for Bosnia's people will require far more searching engagement with identity formation and its politicization than reform efforts have so far contemplated. Theories of discursive democracy illuminate how this might be possible. We deploy the discursive idea of symbolic capital to show how one might identify the lines along which …
Shadows of Democracy in Presidential Rhetoric
Hunting the Devil
The rhetoric of evil, so prominently evident in contemporary presidential public address, articulates a primal motive for the war on terrorism by projecting democracy's shadow onto the external enemy. In this regard, the president's discourse is a manifestation rather than aberration of U.S. political culture, a reflection of the nation's troubled democratic identity. Upon close inspection, it reveals the presence of the mythos of a democratic de…
Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics
Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics. By Tom De Luca and John Buell. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 228p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper. This is a book that looks toward achieving a democracy without demons—a more inclusive, respectful, egalitarian, participatory, and just political covenant—by examining the current proliferation of demonizing rhetoric in the United States as indicativ…
A Presumption of Academic Freedom
For the enrichment of democracy and the higher education of Manuel at the beginning of his freshman year in the honors college of the state university—we cannot abide less. In the simplest terms, a
Savagery in democracy's empire
The language of savagery is indigenous to US political culture as the trope that legitimises war and empire. This article traces its recurrence and development throughout US history, from America's 18th century revolution to the post-World War II American century and from Cold War to the present open-ended war on terror—a continuing quest for empire under the sign of civilisation and democracy. The three main dimensions of the image of savagery a…
Democratic Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique
As an exercise in consubstantial rivalry (a notion adapted from Kenneth Burke), democratic dissent operates tactically to turn the tables on the powerful in a given cultural field of political tension (a perspective drawn from Michel de Certeau). Dissent rearticulates political relationships by an ongoing act of rhetorical critique inside an established framework of understanding. The dissenter is a rhetorical trickster deploying metaphor as a pr…
What are we about
(2004). What are we about? Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 125-126
Evil Enemy Versus Agonistic Other
Fire, Flood, and Red Fever
The Truman doctrine speech, as a rhetorical configuration of cold war motives, is examined closely for its terministic incentives to exaggerate American insecurity and contain the spread of world communism. Metaphors of disease, strategically embedded in the design of the speech, converged with existing images of fire and flood to construct a sense of epidemic and impending disaster. This disease metaphor is traced from the genesis of the speech …
Democratic deliberation in a rhetorical republic
DEMOCRACY AND DISAGREEMENT. By Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996; pp. viii + 422. $27.95; paper $16.95. THE MILD VOICE OF REASON: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. By Joseph M. Bessette. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994; pp. xvi + 289. $32.50; paper $15.95. NORMS OF RHETORICAL CULTURE. By Thomas B. Farrell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, …
What's at stake for public discourse
Rhetorical innovations
The social relevance of rhetorical scholarship
Images of savagery in American justifications for war
This paper identifies the essential characteristics of victimage rhetoric in American justifications for war. The Johnson administration's insistence on the aggression‐from‐the‐North thesis is the starting point for the analysis. Close inspection of the administration's efforts reveals that the enemy is portrayed as a savage, i.e., an aggressor, driven by irrational desires for conquest, who is seeking to subjugate others by force of arms. This i…
Metaphor and the rhetorical invention of cold war “idealists”
This paper presents a five‐step procedure for identifying metaphorical concepts guiding the rhetorical invention of three Cold War idealists”;: Henry Wallace, J. William Fulbright, and Helen Caldicott. The source of their collective failure to dispel threatening images of Soviet savagery is located in a recurrent system of metaphorical concepts (including MADNESS, PATHOLOGY, SICKNESS, AND FORCE) that promotes a reversal of the enemy‐image rather …
Hunting the Devil
The rhetoric of evil, so prominently evident in contemporary presidential public address, articulates a primal motive for the war on terrorism by projecting democracy's shadow onto the external enemy. In this regard, the president's discourse is a manifestation rather than aberration of U.S. political culture, a reflection of the nation's troubled democratic identity. Upon close inspection, it reveals the presence of the mythos of a democratic de…
Savagery in democracy's empire
The language of savagery is indigenous to US political culture as the trope that legitimises war and empire. This article traces its recurrence and development throughout US history, from America's 18th century revolution to the post-World War II American century and from Cold War to the present open-ended war on terror—a continuing quest for empire under the sign of civilisation and democracy. The three main dimensions of the image of savagery a…
Presidential motives for war
The vocabulary of American Presidents is analyzed to locate the images, or vocabularies of motives, that they project in justification of war. Kenneth Burke's dramatism provides the methodological resources to chart and synthesize the language of Madison, Polk, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson in selected war messages and to discover that their vocabulary establishes a rigid and truncated pattern of justification for war
Fire, Flood, and Red Fever
The Truman doctrine speech, as a rhetorical configuration of cold war motives, is examined closely for its terministic incentives to exaggerate American insecurity and contain the spread of world communism. Metaphors of disease, strategically embedded in the design of the speech, converged with existing images of fire and flood to construct a sense of epidemic and impending disaster. This disease metaphor is traced from the genesis of the speech …
Evil Enemy Versus Agonistic Other
The metaphor of forge in Prowar discourse
This paper identifies “force” as the master trope of prowar discourse. Attention is focused on its literalization through a process that involves the selection of decivilizing vehicles, the affirmation of threatening expectations, the suggestion of rational demonstrations, and the subversion of competing perspectives. Each of these operations is illustrated in the specific context of the War of 1812, while the discussion as a whole is directed at…
Democratic Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique
As an exercise in consubstantial rivalry (a notion adapted from Kenneth Burke), democratic dissent operates tactically to turn the tables on the powerful in a given cultural field of political tension (a perspective drawn from Michel de Certeau). Dissent rearticulates political relationships by an ongoing act of rhetorical critique inside an established framework of understanding. The dissenter is a rhetorical trickster deploying metaphor as a pr…
Enabling Democratic Dissent
Dissent, in its distinctive contribution to democratic practice, neither reduces to protest nor advances toward consensus. It is a double-sided discourse with both a solid footing in public culture and a sharp edge for cutting through political orthodoxies. Rhetorical invention is its dynamic. Dissenters must maneuver, like mythical tricksters, to sustain the vitality of democracy. The viability of their democratic interventions depends on the in…
A Presumption of Academic Freedom
For the enrichment of democracy and the higher education of Manuel at the beginning of his freshman year in the honors college of the state university—we cannot abide less. In the simplest terms, a
The complete criticism of political rhetoric
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN AMERICA. By Robert E. Denton, Jr. and Gary C. Woodward. New York: Praeger, 1985; pp. 364. $42.95; paper $15.95. RHETORIC AND AMERICAN STATESMANSHIP. Edited by Glen E. Thurow and Jeffrey D. Wallin. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1984; pp. 151. $14.95; paper 7.95. VERBAL STYLE AND THE PRESIDENCY: A COMPUTER‐BASED ANALYSIS. By Roderick P. Hart. Orlando: Academic Press, 1984; pp. 322. $35.00. THE FORCE OF FANTASY: R…
Hegemony, instabilities, and interventions
The special issue of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses on discourses of war and peace, 70 years after the end of World War II, is introduced by discussing war culture as resilient but also unstable and subject to transformation. The special issue features six papers, each a distinct discursive intervention on topics that range from the mythic narrative of US insecurity to strategies of rhetorical bypassing, British colonial nostalgia, margi…
Shadows of Democracy in Presidential Rhetoric
Trump’s Unwitting Prophecy
Research Article| December 01 2017 Trump's Unwitting Prophecy Robert L. Ivie Robert L. Ivie Robert L. Ivie is Professor Emeritus of English (Rhetoric) and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (4): 707–718. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.4.0707 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search…
Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics
Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics. By Tom De Luca and John Buell. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 228p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper. This is a book that looks toward achieving a democracy without demons—a more inclusive, respectful, egalitarian, participatory, and just political covenant—by examining the current proliferation of demonizing rhetoric in the United States as indicativ…
Democratic deliberation in a rhetorical republic
DEMOCRACY AND DISAGREEMENT. By Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996; pp. viii + 422. $27.95; paper $16.95. THE MILD VOICE OF REASON: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. By Joseph M. Bessette. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994; pp. xvi + 289. $32.50; paper $15.95. NORMS OF RHETORICAL CULTURE. By Thomas B. Farrell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, …
Productive criticism
Justifying the War of 1812
A decade ago, Richard Hofstadter wrote that historians were approaching consensus on the political origins of the War of 1812. Blending elements of the work during the early 1960s of Norman K. Risjord, Bradford Perkins, and Roger H. Brown, Hofstadter (1969: 181) concluded that Republicans were convinced “the Republic itself and the fate of republican government had come to rest on the ability of the Republican party to take a forceful stand again…
Presidential motives for war
The vocabulary of American Presidents is analyzed to locate the images, or vocabularies of motives, that they project in justification of war. Kenneth Burke's dramatism provides the methodological resources to chart and synthesize the language of Madison, Polk, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson in selected war messages and to discover that their vocabulary establishes a rigid and truncated pattern of justification for war
Images of savagery in American justifications for war
This paper identifies the essential characteristics of victimage rhetoric in American justifications for war. The Johnson administration's insistence on the aggression‐from‐the‐North thesis is the starting point for the analysis. Close inspection of the administration's efforts reveals that the enemy is portrayed as a savage, i.e., an aggressor, driven by irrational desires for conquest, who is seeking to subjugate others by force of arms. This i…
Justifying the War of 1812
Justifying the War of 1812
A decade ago, Richard Hofstadter wrote that historians were approaching consensus on the political origins of the War of 1812. Blending elements of the work during the early 1960s of Norman K. Risjord, Bradford Perkins, and Roger H. Brown, Hofstadter (1969: 181) concluded that Republicans were convinced “the Republic itself and the fate of republican government had come to rest on the ability of the Republican party to take a forceful stand again…
The metaphor of forge in Prowar discourse
This paper identifies “force” as the master trope of prowar discourse. Attention is focused on its literalization through a process that involves the selection of decivilizing vehicles, the affirmation of threatening expectations, the suggestion of rational demonstrations, and the subversion of competing perspectives. Each of these operations is illustrated in the specific context of the War of 1812, while the discussion as a whole is directed at…
Mr. Madison's War
Congress Declares War
Congress Declares War
Congress Declares War
Metaphor and the rhetorical invention of cold war “idealists”
This paper presents a five‐step procedure for identifying metaphorical concepts guiding the rhetorical invention of three Cold War idealists”;: Henry Wallace, J. William Fulbright, and Helen Caldicott. The source of their collective failure to dispel threatening images of Soviet savagery is located in a recurrent system of metaphorical concepts (including MADNESS, PATHOLOGY, SICKNESS, AND FORCE) that promotes a reversal of the enemy‐image rather …
The complete criticism of political rhetoric
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN AMERICA. By Robert E. Denton, Jr. and Gary C. Woodward. New York: Praeger, 1985; pp. 364. $42.95; paper $15.95. RHETORIC AND AMERICAN STATESMANSHIP. Edited by Glen E. Thurow and Jeffrey D. Wallin. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1984; pp. 151. $14.95; paper 7.95. VERBAL STYLE AND THE PRESIDENCY: A COMPUTER‐BASED ANALYSIS. By Roderick P. Hart. Orlando: Academic Press, 1984; pp. 322. $35.00. THE FORCE OF FANTASY: R…
"Whither the "Evil Empire
Where are we headed
The performance of rhetorical knowledge
A question of significance
Scrutinizing performances of rhetorical criticism
Criticizing rhetorical architecture
What's at stake for public discourse
Rhetorical innovations
The social relevance of rhetorical scholarship
Productive criticism
Democratic deliberation in a rhetorical republic
DEMOCRACY AND DISAGREEMENT. By Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996; pp. viii + 422. $27.95; paper $16.95. THE MILD VOICE OF REASON: DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. By Joseph M. Bessette. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994; pp. xvi + 289. $32.50; paper $15.95. NORMS OF RHETORICAL CULTURE. By Thomas B. Farrell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, …
Fire, Flood, and Red Fever
The Truman doctrine speech, as a rhetorical configuration of cold war motives, is examined closely for its terministic incentives to exaggerate American insecurity and contain the spread of world communism. Metaphors of disease, strategically embedded in the design of the speech, converged with existing images of fire and flood to construct a sense of epidemic and impending disaster. This disease metaphor is traced from the genesis of the speech …
Evil Enemy Versus Agonistic Other
What are we about
(2004). What are we about? Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 125-126
Political science (36 works) · Law (32 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Rhetoric and Communication Studies (21 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Rhetorical question (15 works) · Rhetoric (14 works)