The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory
Published on 16. March 2026
Book
Hardback
750 pages
978-0-19-022094-5 (ISBN)
Description
The resurgence of interest in rhetoric among political theorists is one of the most remarkable developments in the field over the past few decades. Assembling a multidisciplinary group of prominent scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory is the most ambitious effort to date to display the range and vitality of work that constitutes the "rhetorical turn" in political theory.
Including thirty-six chapters across five sections, the Handbook explores issues that reside at the heart of many of the most pivotal debates and discussions in political theory today: questions about the role of affect and emotion in political life, the work of persuasion in political discourse, the relationship between logic and style in political argument, the character and scope of public deliberation, the performative and constitutive dimensions of language, the play of contingency in political life, and the rhetorical structure of political texts. The volume's authors assess the changing status of rhetoric in political theory and philosophy, exploring disputes that arose in ancient Athens and have continued to the present day, as well as urgent issues that have only recently emerged. Moreover, the Handbook investigates different understandings of rhetoric that have animated recent scholarship and examines key issues and approaches that have fueled the burgeoning interest in rhetoric and political thought.
The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory demonstrates that an adequate understanding of political affairs cannot be attained without taking account the impact of rhetoric on political thought and conduct.
Including thirty-six chapters across five sections, the Handbook explores issues that reside at the heart of many of the most pivotal debates and discussions in political theory today: questions about the role of affect and emotion in political life, the work of persuasion in political discourse, the relationship between logic and style in political argument, the character and scope of public deliberation, the performative and constitutive dimensions of language, the play of contingency in political life, and the rhetorical structure of political texts. The volume's authors assess the changing status of rhetoric in political theory and philosophy, exploring disputes that arose in ancient Athens and have continued to the present day, as well as urgent issues that have only recently emerged. Moreover, the Handbook investigates different understandings of rhetoric that have animated recent scholarship and examines key issues and approaches that have fueled the burgeoning interest in rhetoric and political thought.
The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory demonstrates that an adequate understanding of political affairs cannot be attained without taking account the impact of rhetoric on political thought and conduct.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 184 mm
Thickness: 51 mm
Weight
1420 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-022094-5 (9780190220945)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar is Professor of Rhetoric, Media, and Publics and Director of the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.
Keith Topper is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the PhD Program in Culture and Theory at the University of California, Irvine.
Keith Topper is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the PhD Program in Culture and Theory at the University of California, Irvine.
Editor
Professor of Rhetoric, Media, and Publics and Director of the Center for Global Culture and CommunicationProfessor of Rhetoric, Media, and Publics and Director of the Center for Global Culture and Communication, Northwestern University
Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the PhD Program in Culture and TheoryAssociate Professor of Political Science and Director of the PhD Program in Culture and Theory, University of California, Irvine
Content
List of Contributors 1. Introduction: The Rhetorical Turn in Political Theory
Keith Topper PART I: SITUATING POLITICS AND RHETORIC 2. On the Writtenness of Political Theory
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Keith Topper 3. Audi Alteram Partem: Rhetoric and Republican Political Thought
Genevieve Rousseliere 4. Denazification: Rhetoric, Politics, and the Affective Turn
Daniel M. Gross 5. Rhetorics of Affect: Notes on the Political Theory of the Passions
John Brenkman 6. Visual Rhetoric, Retaliatory Humiliation: ISIS Executions, Performative Violence, and Sovereign Power
Roxanne Euben 7. An Ethics of Public Political Deliberation: The Case of Rhetoric
Simone Chambers PART II: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 8. On Persuasion in Plato's Republic
Jill Frank 9. Aristotle's Rhetoric as Political Philosophy
Bernard Yack 10. Cicero's Orator: Integrity and Instability in the Rhetorical Republic
Joy Connolly PART III: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE 11. The Power and Peril of Names: Rhetoric, Politics, and Philosophy in Augustine's City of God
Mary M. Keys 12. Machiavelli and the Rhetoric of Republicanism: The Cambridge School's Guicciardinian Moments Revisited
John P. McCormick 13. Hobbes Reading Hobbes: Applying Hobbes's Instructions for Reading Scripture to a Reading of Leviathan Itself
James R. Martel 14. Spinoza's Failed Rhetoric of a Supposedly Inconspicuous Transition to Secularity
Ronald Beiner 15. John Locke and Rhetoric
Torrey Shanks 16. Neither/Nor: Vico Beyond Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
David L. Marshall PART IV: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA 17. Montesquieu, Rhetoric, and Freedom without Equality
Rebecca Kingston 18. Rhetoric and Political Theory: Rousseau's Modernization of an Ancient Partnership
Peter Alexander Meyers 19. Bringing Home the Case of the Poor: The Rhetorical Achievement of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
Samuel Fleischacker 20. Burke and the Rhetoric of Imperial Self-Knowledge
Uday S. Mehta 21. "Always Watching Ourselves": Rhetoric and Representation in Benjamin Constant
Bryan Garsten 22. Freedom through Bildung: Rhetoric, "Second Nature," and "Ethical Life" in Hegel's Political Theory
John H. Smith 23. The Rhetoric of Reason in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Daniel I. O'Neill 24. Tocqueville's Rhetoric
George Shulman 25. Comic Crowds: Kierkegaard and the Incongruity of Democratic Politics
Lars Tonder 26. Marx's Rhetoric
James Martin 27. Whitman and the Poetics of Democracy
Betsy Erkkila 28. Writing for All and Writing for None: Nietzsche and Rhetoric
Tracy B. Strong PART V: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND 29. Aesthetics, Politics, Rhetoric: Collingwood's New Leviathan
Nancy Struever 30. Political Philosophy as Rhetoric: Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss
Miguel Vatter 31. Hannah Arendt's Performative Politics
John McGowan 32. Fanon's Revolutionary Rhetoric
Anne Norton 33. Rhetoric as Idealization: The Rhetorical Perspective in Habermas's Discourse Theory
William Rehg 34. Quasi-Metaphoricity and the Turning Force of Alterity
Pheng Cheah 35. Ernesto Laclau and the Rhetorical Ontology of Politics
Stacey Liou 36. The Politics of the Sensible
Davide Panagia
Keith Topper PART I: SITUATING POLITICS AND RHETORIC 2. On the Writtenness of Political Theory
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Keith Topper 3. Audi Alteram Partem: Rhetoric and Republican Political Thought
Genevieve Rousseliere 4. Denazification: Rhetoric, Politics, and the Affective Turn
Daniel M. Gross 5. Rhetorics of Affect: Notes on the Political Theory of the Passions
John Brenkman 6. Visual Rhetoric, Retaliatory Humiliation: ISIS Executions, Performative Violence, and Sovereign Power
Roxanne Euben 7. An Ethics of Public Political Deliberation: The Case of Rhetoric
Simone Chambers PART II: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 8. On Persuasion in Plato's Republic
Jill Frank 9. Aristotle's Rhetoric as Political Philosophy
Bernard Yack 10. Cicero's Orator: Integrity and Instability in the Rhetorical Republic
Joy Connolly PART III: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE 11. The Power and Peril of Names: Rhetoric, Politics, and Philosophy in Augustine's City of God
Mary M. Keys 12. Machiavelli and the Rhetoric of Republicanism: The Cambridge School's Guicciardinian Moments Revisited
John P. McCormick 13. Hobbes Reading Hobbes: Applying Hobbes's Instructions for Reading Scripture to a Reading of Leviathan Itself
James R. Martel 14. Spinoza's Failed Rhetoric of a Supposedly Inconspicuous Transition to Secularity
Ronald Beiner 15. John Locke and Rhetoric
Torrey Shanks 16. Neither/Nor: Vico Beyond Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment
David L. Marshall PART IV: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA 17. Montesquieu, Rhetoric, and Freedom without Equality
Rebecca Kingston 18. Rhetoric and Political Theory: Rousseau's Modernization of an Ancient Partnership
Peter Alexander Meyers 19. Bringing Home the Case of the Poor: The Rhetorical Achievement of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
Samuel Fleischacker 20. Burke and the Rhetoric of Imperial Self-Knowledge
Uday S. Mehta 21. "Always Watching Ourselves": Rhetoric and Representation in Benjamin Constant
Bryan Garsten 22. Freedom through Bildung: Rhetoric, "Second Nature," and "Ethical Life" in Hegel's Political Theory
John H. Smith 23. The Rhetoric of Reason in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Daniel I. O'Neill 24. Tocqueville's Rhetoric
George Shulman 25. Comic Crowds: Kierkegaard and the Incongruity of Democratic Politics
Lars Tonder 26. Marx's Rhetoric
James Martin 27. Whitman and the Poetics of Democracy
Betsy Erkkila 28. Writing for All and Writing for None: Nietzsche and Rhetoric
Tracy B. Strong PART V: POLITICS AND RHETORIC IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND 29. Aesthetics, Politics, Rhetoric: Collingwood's New Leviathan
Nancy Struever 30. Political Philosophy as Rhetoric: Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss
Miguel Vatter 31. Hannah Arendt's Performative Politics
John McGowan 32. Fanon's Revolutionary Rhetoric
Anne Norton 33. Rhetoric as Idealization: The Rhetorical Perspective in Habermas's Discourse Theory
William Rehg 34. Quasi-Metaphoricity and the Turning Force of Alterity
Pheng Cheah 35. Ernesto Laclau and the Rhetorical Ontology of Politics
Stacey Liou 36. The Politics of the Sensible
Davide Panagia