Metaphor’s Keepers: The Mobile Armies of Post-Truth Rhetorics

Communication Studies Colloquium Series: Truth

“Metaphor’s Keepers: The Mobile Armies of Post-Truth Rhetorics,” Dr. Jenny Rice (University of Kentucky)

Conspiracy theories and white supremacist discourse, for example, are two specific scenes of post-truth rhetoric that have been shaped by explicit doctrines of metaphor. In this talk, I examine the role of metaphor-talk within both 21^st century anti-Semitic discourse and conspiracy-oriented Christian evangelicalism. From David Duke’s embrace of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a metaphorical text to Kenneth and Gloria Copeland’s declaration that prayer is a literal inoculation against COVID-19, both cases reflect a kind of “truth” that is grounded in a deliberate and distinct recognition of metaphor’s rhetorical power. Rather than relying on the overly vague label post-truth to engage this discourse, therefore, we might find it useful to start thinking about neo-metaphorical rhetoric.

Dr. Jenny Rice is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at The University of Kentucky. Her work has appeared in such journals as Philosophy & Rhetoric, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and College English. Her book Distant Publics: Development Rhetoric and the Subject of Crisis was published in 2012 (University of Pittsburgh Press). She co-edited (along with Casey Boyle) Inventing Texas: Writing Lone Star Rhetorics (2019, Southern Illinois University Press). Her most recent book, Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Evidence, was published in 2020 by The Ohio State University Press.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Center for Media Engagement.