Transgressive Rhetoric in Deliberative Democracy
Transgressive Rhetoric in Deliberative Democracy
The Black Press
This chapter argues that modern conceptions of rhetoric in liberal democracies tend to be limited on account of unacknowledged ideological biases that favor restrictive norms of rationality and that at the same time condemn as irrational rhetoric that appears to violate such norms. It particularly analyzes black press rhetoric, revealing that some forms of rhetoric do indeed transgress norms of rationality, but do so in ways that are intentionally made visible to readers in order to expose the ideologically freighted idea of what counts as rational discourse in the public sphere. Transgressive rhetoric is often an expression of frustration in the face of systematic inequalities, voiced in protest against ongoing practices of exclusion, and meant as an appeal for recognition and engagement as prerequisite to democratic discourse which claims to be genuinely egalitarian and rational.
Keywords: liberal democracies, black press, transgressive rhetoric, democratic discourse
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