Rhetoric Is Dead? The Fear of Stasis Behind Post-Truth Rhetoric
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21371677 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eric S Jenkins (University of Cincinnati), Éric Jenkins (0000-0003-2798-0689, University of Cincinnati, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 166-193 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-24 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy and Rhetoric (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8213 • E-ISSN: 1527-2079 |
| Publisher | The Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5325/philrhet.57.2.0166 |
| OpenAlex | W4403637111 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 23 |
Why does post-truth discourse feel true? This article argues that post-truth fears the death of rhetoric, rather than truth, and traces that fear to the voluminous, rapid, and intense production of stasis on social media. Social media enable and weaponize the production of stasis, and that production generates affects more aligned with death than life (stagnation, hopelessness) that explain why post-truth feels true. These fears and their concomitant hopes constitute an affective economy also present in philosophy’s predominant images of rhetoric. Some images picture rhetoric as movement, whereas others emphasize rhetoric’s capacity to secure the status quo. Social media beckon a supplementary image—a vortex—in which rhetorical movement functions to produce standstill. This image suggests the need to consider affects generated by rhetorical processes as much as from texts. Post-truth’s affective economy also drives stasis production generally, and scholars should attend to the affective economies driving various rhetorical modes
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Rhetoric · Media Studies and Communication · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |