Rhetoric in Postmodern America: Conversations with Michael Calvin McGee

The first book-length presentation of the influential work of Michael Calvin McGee, this volume demonstrates the importance of rhetoric to understanding power and culture in the postmodern age. The book is largely based on a series of seminars in which McGee draws on important figures spanning the history of rhetorical thought--from Plato and Aristotle to Marx, McLuhan, Althusser, and Baudrillard--to develop his ideas about orality and performance, the public, technology, and processes of political change. An introduction by John Louis Lucaites discusses McGee's pathbreaking role within the wider field of rhetoric, and a concluding essay on Spike Lee enacts the "performative criticism" McGee theorizes in previous chapters to construct a powerful argument about race in contemporary America.