• presidential rhetoric

Harvey Mansfield, the only neocon Straussian still worth reading, picks up on the theme of the "apolitical" advanced well by his students Bryan Garsten and Michael Kochin. Next up: having turned Sarah Palin into a useful idiot for the Likud, an endorsement for 2012! She will bomb Iran, after all. Jews praying Christian prayers in public school will be a small price to pay. (Yes, Omri.)

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• rhetoric of economics

A lovely bit of writing, as always, from our Aunt Deirdre.

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• announcements and queries

California Studies Consortium Grants
University of California Humanities Research Institute
New Deadline for All Programs: February 15, 2010
http://chcinetwork.org/california-studies-consortium-uccsc-grants/

Visiting Humanities Fellowships, 2010-2011
Humanities Research Group
University of Windsor
Deadline: February 17, 2010
http://chcinetwork.org/visiting-humanities-fellowships-2010-2011

2009-2010 IHR Transdisciplinary Book Award
Institute for Humanities Research (IHR)
Arizona State University
Deadline for Nominations: February 14, 2010

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• rhetoric of civil rights

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• theorizing

In his classic work, Asylums, sociologist Erving Goffman describes what he calls "degradation rituals" in "total institutions" such as mental hospitals and prisons.

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• virtues

"We are adult because we have behind us the silent presence of the dead, whom we ask to judge our current actions and from whom we ask forgiveness for past offences… we are adult because of that brief moment when one day it fell to our lot to live when we had looked at the things of the world as if for the last time, when we had renounced our possession of them and returned them to the will of God: and suddenly the things of the world appeared to us in their just place beneath the sky, and the human beings too.

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• theorizing
• wankery

John Yoo on Habermas.

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• legal rhetoric

Oral testimony is now over. William Eskridge provide a splendid summary of key arguments. Before the trial started, I was one of those who opposed the Olson/Boies strategy (and thought it was better to slog through the legislatures), but now I'm convinced that the strategy was right. The advocates for the defense have been so incompetent (and mendacious) that I don't see how Judge Walker can rule for them. And, eventually, it all depends on Justice Kennedy (who, as I noted before, attended Ted Olson's wedding last year).

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• theorizing

The Manchester Guardian continues its introduction to great philosophical works with a discussion of the later Wittgenstein, practice, and religion. (I cannot imagine any US newspaper running a series like this, alas.) Imprisoned in the "text" as we are, we haven't quite fulfilled the promise of the later Wittgenstein for rhetorical theory.

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• conferences and calls

(The bibliography is really excellent; you could build a whole course around it. I remain a bit befuddled about the difference between "rhetoric" and "argumentation"--although sometimes I think it's just easier to "sell" "argumentation" as a term.)

Dear Colleague,

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