Date of Award

6-15-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Communication Studies

First Advisor

Joshua Hanan

Second Advisor

Christina Foust

Third Advisor

Darrin Hicks

Fourth Advisor

Thomas Nail

Keywords

Affect, Assemblage, Cultural studies, Rhetoric, Social movement

Abstract

This project explores the affective circulation of controversy in contemporary public discourse through a rhetorical ecological approach. It addresses the problem of how flattened conceptions of power and social movements cast in binary opposition prevent effective deliberation around public controversies. The research method involves analyzing three case studies through a new framework for rhetorical studies, called a logic of emergence, to consider the resonance and trajectories of actants (individuals, groups, and institutions) in conflict. The first case study examines the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and the discursive equating of antifa and the Alt-Right. The second case analyzes the controversy surrounding a graduate instructor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln who was fired for confronting an undergraduate student tabling for Turning Point USA. The final case explores the cultural impacts and responses to COVID-19, particularly in educational contexts.

Controversies are shaped by the affective circulation of discourse across personal, group, and civic scales. Actants emerge from different spatiotemporal locations with varying degrees of freedom and constraints based on their resonance with dominant power structures. Claims of victimhood and equivalency between opposing groups often obscure the underlying assemblages that enable or limit their respective movements. The significance of this research lies in its application of affect theory and complexity theory to understand the role of power relations in shaping controversies. By tracing the emergence and trajectories of actants across multiple scales, it challenges the notion of horizontal power relations and binary oppositions, revealing how some actants function as attractors, maintaining homeostatic patterns, while others operate as bifurcators, threatening to repattern systems.

Rhetorical interventions at the level of individual exchange are inherently limited by the affective circulation of discourse within larger assemblages of power. Effective critiques and interventions must account for the historical, social, and cultural articulations that structure the potential emergence and movement of actants within controversies. As such, in cases where disputes arise between interlocutors with fundamentally different rhetorical resonances, materialist rhetorical interventions should focus on bifurcating to alter the available points of emergence and their resulting trajectories.

Copyright Date

6-2024

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Craig R. Weathers

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

243 pgs

File Size

1.6 MB

Download

Available for download on Thursday, August 06, 2026



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