{"id":48311,"date":"2016-07-19T00:24:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T00:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48311"},"modified":"2016-07-19T00:24:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T00:24:31","slug":"barack-obama-and-the-rhetoric-of-hope-by-mark-s-ferrara-review-ellis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48311","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope by Mark S. Ferrara (review) [Ellis]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope<\/em> by Mark S. Ferrara (review) [Ellis]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Utopian Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 27, Number 2, 2016<\/a>
\npages 382-386<\/p>\n

Cameron Ellis<\/strong><\/a>
\nTrent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

Mark S. Ferrara. Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope<\/a>,<\/em> Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2013. 204 pp. Paper, $29.95, isbn 978-0-7864-6793-8<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark S. Ferrara\u2019s<\/a> principle scholarly interests lie within the fields of religious studies and Asian philosophy, as indicated on his State University of New York\u2013Oneonta English faculty page and demonstrated in his other books Between Noble and Humble: Cao Xueqin and the Dream of the Red Chamber<\/em> (co-edited with Ronald R. Gray, Peter Lang, 2009) and Palace of Ashes: China and the Decline of American Higher Education<\/em> (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). However, it is his interests in rhetoric and political discourse, cultural studies, and world literature that make Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope<\/em><\/a> such an insightful and pleasant contribution to the commentary on and criticism of the outgoing president. Ferrara wastes no time using his resources to contextualize the significance his study of the president has\u2014especially as of 2008, which saw Obama<\/a> being elected for the first time\u2014by citing a Chinese proverb: \u201cchaotic times make heroes (shi shi zao ying xiong<\/em>)\u201d (19). Although not mentioned explicitly, this proverb alludes to Obama\u2019s inheritance of an extremely precarious geopolitical situation left festering by the Bush administration. (In fact, even though I wanted him to \u201cgo there,\u201d Ferrara steers clear of the dangerous intricacies entwining Obama\u2019s legacy in terms of Bush\u2019s. The first explicit mention of Bush does not even appear until page 99.) Not only is this book a wonderful contribution to the study of American history and political science, but also it is a decidedly welcome addition to utopian studies<\/a> by way of its analysis of one of the most important figures to date.<\/p>\n

The advantage that adopting a utopian analytic in such a case study as Obama is that Ferrara liberates the conversation he seeks to facilitate from regressing into polemics and partisan politics, the kind that one sees most negatively worked out in other works on the president such as Stanley Kurts\u2019s Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism<\/em> (Simon and Schuster, 2010), Dinesh D\u2019souza\u2019s<\/a> Obama\u2019s America: Unmaking the American Dream<\/em> (Regnery Publishing, 2012), and Bob Thiel\u2019s Barack Obama, Prophesy, and the Destruction of the United States<\/em> (Nazarene Books, 2012), which read into the president signs and symptoms of America\u2019s downfall. While it is quite clear that Ferrara is a champion of Obama, it never feels as though he is hitting his reader over the head with his views. Rather, Ferrara encourages his reader to recall that, regardless of one\u2019s political alliance, Obama ran two successful campaigns on a positive message: hope. One of the greatest strengths of Ferrara\u2019s book resides in his skill of presenting this aspect of the president while refraining from sentimentalism and nostalgia. Instead the reader is offered a well-researched piece of scholarly labor by one of the best in the field of rhetoric and political discourse.<\/p>\n

I came to this book as an outsider to American history, but after reading it I feel as though I have a much-improved sense of the American tradition insofar as that tradition is one rooted in idealism. Ferrara helps his reader better understand how Obama captured this idealism and utilized it in terms of his political rhetoric. \u201cSince this is a rhetorical study,\u201d Ferrara writes early on, \u201c\u2026 I am grateful to be spared the burden of aligning the word with reality\u2014a task best left to the political pundits. My interest is specifically in the evocation of a better future toward which we progress gradually, one that offers a sort of collective salvation\u201d (14\u201315). Drawing heavily on Obama\u2019s own writings\u2014namely, Dreams from My Father<\/em><\/a> (2004) and The Audacity of Hope<\/em><\/a> (2008)\u2014Ferrara exercises academic rigor and resists needless sentimentalism by skillfully integrating these popular texts into the web of political speeches and interviews that flood the information highway. Starting in chapter 1 Ferrara grounds his study of Obama\u2019s rhetoric of hope in the Judeo-Christian<\/a> religious tradition: \u201cImages of collectivist rebellion against the evils of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope by Mark S. Ferrara (review) [Ellis] Utopian Studies Volume 27, Number 2, 2016 pages 382-386 Cameron Ellis Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada Mark S. Ferrara. Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2013. 204 pp. Paper, $29.95, isbn 978-0-7864-6793-8 Mark S. Ferrara\u2019s principle scholarly interests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,5,1196,8,26,820,20],"tags":[24513,24512,24509,24514],"class_list":["post-48311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-religion","category-usa","tag-cameron-ellis","tag-mark-ferraras","tag-mark-s-ferrara","tag-utopian-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48311","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=48311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48312,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48311\/revisions\/48312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}