Angry Public Rhetorics: Global Relations and Emotion in the Wake of 9/11

ISBN-13: 9780472130955 Publisher: University of Michigan Press Publication date: 08/07/2018 Series: Configurations: Critical Studies Of World Politics Pages: 350 Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d) In Angry Public Rhetorics, Celeste Condit explores emotions as motivators and organizers of collective action—a theory that treats humans as “symbol-using animals” to understand the patterns of leadership in global affairs—to account for the way in which anger produced similar rhetorics in three ideologically diverse voices surrounding 9/11: Osama bin Laden, President George W. Bush, and Susan Sontag. These voices show that anger is more effective for producing some collective actions, such as rallying supporters, reifying existing worldviews, motivating attack, enforcing shared norms, or threatening from positions of power; and less effective for others, like broadening thought, attracting new allies, adjudicating justice across cultural norms, or threatening from positions of