The Rhetorical Roots of Du Bois's Double Consciousness
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6427435 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rob Goodman (0000-0003-2114-0275, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Administration, Toronto Metropolitan University, 350 Victoria St., Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 577-604 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-30 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Thought (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-781X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.53765/20512988.44.3.577 |
| OpenAlex | W4386293548 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Drawing on evidence from W. E. B. Du Bois's education, I argue that rhetoric is an important, yet overlooked, source of his concept of double consciousness. Du Bois transposed ideas of a divided self as a source of both power and anguish from classical rhetoric to the experience of racial oppression. I show how rhetoric supplies the 'causal mechanism' of double consciousness; read The Souls of Black Folk as superimposed addresses to doubly- and singly-conscious audiences; and argue that Du Bois's 1930s turn to black-separatist cooperativism represents an attempted escape from double consciousness — and a recognition of rhetoric's limits under systemic injustice
Aesthetics · Consciousness · Double consciousness · Epistemology · Injustice · Linguistics · Oppression · Political science · Power (physics · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Theology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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