Daggers at the Throat of Democracy: Democratic Erosion in the US and Abroad. (20th February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Trabold, Bryan
• Is Part Of: American literary history. Volume 35:Number 1(2023)
• Page Start: 424
• Page End: 431
• Publication Date: 2023-02-20
• Subjects: American literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.1093/alh/ajac240
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0896-7148

Abstract

Abstract: Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics (2021), edited by Patricia Bizzell and Lisa Zimmerelli, and Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas (2021), edited by Adriana Angel, Michael L. Butterworth, and Nancy R. Gómez, both examine the complex relationship between rhetoric and democracy. In terms of their immediate scholarly objectives, these volumes clearly succeed. Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics, a 24-essay collection that employs a broad range of rhetorical approaches both classical and contemporary, provides a more comprehensive overview of rhetorical activism during that period in US history than any book published to date. Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas, with its 11 essays written by scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the US, who write not only about conditions in those countries but also in Cuba, Guatemala, and Venezuela, contains a range of perspectives in one volume that, to my knowledge, does not exist anywhere else. Taken together, both collections also provide compelling insights into the democratic erosion currently taking place around the world by illustrating how the intersection of violence, white supremacy, and religion pose an existential threat to democracy, particularly in the US.Taken together, both collections analyze rhetoric in vastly different times and places to identify and illuminate how the intersection of violence, white supremacy, and religion pose an existential threat to democracy, particularly in the US.