{"id":48318,"date":"2016-07-19T01:23:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T01:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48318"},"modified":"2016-07-19T01:23:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T01:23:44","slug":"barack-obama-and-the-rhetoric-of-hope-by-mark-s-ferrara-review-williamson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48318","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope by Mark S. Ferrara (review) [Williamson]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Rhetoric & Public Affairs<\/a>
\nVollume 18, Number 4, Winter 2015<\/a>
\npages 748-750<\/p>\n

Jason G. Williamson<\/strong><\/a>
\nDepartment of Communication Studies
\nUniversity of Georgia<\/em><\/p>\n

Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope<\/em><\/a>. By Mark S. Ferrara<\/a>. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2013; pp. 204. $45.00 paper.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope<\/em><\/a>, Mark S. Ferrara<\/a> attempts to piece together the historical, intellectual, and literary influences of Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> presidential campaign rhetoric, primarily as the \u201crhetoric of hope\u201d was constructed leading up to the 2008 campaign and employed during that campaign, as well as its reemergence for 2012. Ferrara defines the rhetoric of hope as \u201cdeliberately constructed political discourse that envisions social betterment brought about by the force of shared values and culminating in a promise of a \u2018more perfect union\u2019 in the future\u201d (11). The utopian idealism that percolates throughout Obama\u2019s campaign discourse is of particular interest to Ferrara, especially as American rhetorical tropes are employed to discursively construct Obama as a \u201cquasi-prophetic\u201d figure who possesses the leadership skills necessary to move the country closer to collective salvation (14\u201315). Ferrara repeatedly observes the rhetoric of hope relying on a dialectical tension between the ideal and the actual, promising to transform the current status quo into a salvific telos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The book is primarily organized into two major sections, with the first half (chapters 1\u20135) dedicated to locating historical and literary influences of Obama\u2019s rhetoric of hope and the second half (chapters 6\u201310) investigating the values and characteristics of this rhetoric, concluding with a comparison of Obama\u2019s two presidential campaigns. The opening chapters outline the manner in which utopian tropes derived from Judeo-Christian thought (chapter 1) as well as the European Enlightenment (chapter 2) influence Obama\u2019s rhetoric. In the three chapters that follow, Ferrara continues [End Page 748] pulling on individual threads, such as slave narratives (chapter 3); the presidential traditions of Thomas Jefferson<\/a>, Abraham Lincoln<\/a>, and Franklin Roosevelt<\/a> (chapter 4); and the influence of fiction, music, and popular culture (chapter 5), arguing that these threads, woven together, form Obama\u2019s rhetoric of hope.<\/p>\n

In the second half, Ferrara moves beyond the antecedents of the rhetoric of hope, presenting a reading of Obama\u2019s campaign rhetoric as an amalgam of multiple influences. Chapter 6 analyzes the role of American values in the rhetoric of hope, culminating in Obama\u2019s embodiment of the American Dream<\/a>, a combination of individual determination and community awareness with a heavy emphasis on \u201cwork\u201d as an operative term, a theme that the president continues in his second term, as evident in the most recent State of the Union address. Ferrara approaches Obama\u2019s discourse with an Aristotelian conception of rhetoric and places a heavy emphasis on the deliberate decisions of the rhetor<\/a>, highlighting Obama\u2019s role as a writing subject constructing his own narrative persona in chapter 7. Ferrara, an assistant professor of English at State University of New York at Oneonta, reads Obama\u2019s autobiographical narratives as an effort in which Obama \u201ccasts himself as a prophet of change situated by virtue of his unique American story to usher in a new global order\u201d (135). Ferrara locates Obama within the tradition of political autobiographical works in American history \u201cfrom John Smith to Benjamin Franklin<\/a> to Malcolm X<\/a>,\u201d arguing that Obama intentionally constructs his own story in such a way as to build on American mythologies (125). The climax is perhaps seen in Obama\u2019s 2008 tour of the Middle East and Europe (chapter 8), where his narrative positions Obama as a figure that can unite American ideals with a global, multicultural audience. The final two chapters track the continuation of the 2008 campaign themes in 2011 and 2012, underscoring the claim that \u201cthe rhetoric of hope contains a neat circularity that is the product of intentional design\u201d (187). Whether by intent or not, the characteristics of the rhetoric of hope obviously manifest in Obama\u2019s campaigns.<\/p>\n

Throughout, Ferrara\u2019s analysis casts light on many aspects of Obama\u2019s rhetoric that the reader will find intuitive. Although his prose is occasionally too driven by quotations and not enough of the author\u2019s own voice, the text and analysis is accessible for a wide audience. Readers who study presidential rhetoric will immediately note the pronounced absence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope by Mark S. Ferrara (review) [Williamson] Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vollume 18, Number 4, Winter 2015 pages 748-750 Jason G. Williamson Department of Communication Studies University of Georgia Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Hope. By Mark S. Ferrara. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2013; pp. 204. $45.00 […]<\/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],"tags":[24515,24516,24510,24509,10207],"class_list":["post-48318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","tag-jason-g-williamson","tag-jason-williamson","tag-mark-ferrara","tag-mark-s-ferrara","tag-rhetoric-public-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318","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=48318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48319,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318\/revisions\/48319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}