{"id":42553,"date":"2015-09-03T17:13:35","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T17:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42553"},"modified":"2016-07-10T00:18:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T00:18:22","slug":"double-consciousness-and-the-rhetoric-of-barack-obama-the-price-and-promise-of-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42553","title":{"rendered":"Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

University of South Carolina Press<\/a>
\nJune 2015
\n224 pages
\n6 x 9
\nHardcover ISBN: 978-1-61117-531-8
\neBook ISBN: 978-1-61117-532-5<\/p>\n

Robert E. Terrill<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor
\nDepartment of Communication & Culture
\nIndiana University, Bloomington<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An examination of President Obama’s oratory as a reflection of the African American experience<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert E. Terrill argues that, to invent a robust manner of addressing one another as citizens, Americans must learn to draw on the delicate indignities of racial exclusion that have stained citizenship since its inception. In Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama<\/em>, Terrill demonstrates how President Barack Obama’s<\/a> public address models such a discourse.<\/p>\n

Terrill contends that Obama’s most effective oratory invites his audiences to experience a form of “double-consciousness<\/a>,” famously described by W. E. B. Du Bois<\/a> as a feeling of “two-ness” resulting from the African American experience of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” It is described as an effect of cruel alienation that can also bring a gift of “second-sight” in the form of perspectives on practices of citizenship not available to those in positions of privilege. When addressing fellow citizens, Obama is asking each to share in the “peculiar sensation” that Du Bois described. The racial history of U.S. citizenship is a resource for inventing contemporary ways of speaking about race.<\/p>\n

Through close analyses of selected speeches from Obama’s 2008 campaign and first presidential term, this book argues that Obama does not present double-consciousness merely as a point of view but as an idiom with which we might speak to one another. Of course, as Du Bois’s work reminds us, double-consciousness results from imposition and encumbrance, so that Obama’s oratory presents a mode of address that emphasizes the burdens of citizenship together with the benefits, the price as well as the promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship University of South Carolina Press June 2015 224 pages 6 x 9 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61117-531-8 eBook ISBN: 978-1-61117-532-5 Robert E. Terrill, Associate Professor Department of Communication & Culture Indiana University, Bloomington An examination of President Obama’s oratory as a reflection of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,11,8413,8,17,20],"tags":[20926,20927,16608],"class_list":["post-42553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-books","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","tag-robert-e-terrill","tag-robert-terrill","tag-university-of-south-carolina-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42554,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42553\/revisions\/42554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}