Forensic Rhetorics and Satellite Surveillance

Reviews / Votes

Hasian's volume offers a valuable contribution to the growing body of work that engages rhetoric and security. The volume pinpoints deadly intersections of language, materiality, and humanitarian intervention. Its detailed, contemporary case studies usefully illustrate the ethics and politics inherent in competing, high-stakes interpretations of satellite imagery among states and citizens. Hasian cautions readers to attend to how forensic rhetorics construct crises in ways that bolster securitization and militarization. Readers will gain an in-depth and nuanced understanding of the suasory power of satellite surveillance. -- Hamilton Bean, University of Colorado, Denver Professor Hasian Jr. provides a theoretically rich, yet grounded, examination of the complex ways satellite surveillance is used to make truth claims. Hasian Jr.'s merging of critical theory and classical rhetoric is an example of the best efforts of rhetorical critics. The case studies provided by the book help open satellite surveillance to questions of epistemology. Yet, Hasian Jr. deftly avoids collapsing epistemology into ontology by opening necessary questions of rhetoric's connection to the material world. -- George F. McHendry, Creighton University Professor Hasian's brilliantly delivered discussion of imaging intelligence and surveillance rhetorics demonstrates a frightening shift in public disputation, thresholds and uses of evidence, and public discourse itself; a shift that privileges the ocular power of satellite surveillance as if such imagery exerts only truth free from evaluation, dissent, discussion, and criticism. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the sanctity of public discourse as well as rhetorical, argumentation, and critical scholars. -- Derek Buescher, University of Puget Sound