{"id":6362,"date":"2018-06-17T09:31:57","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T14:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/?p=6362"},"modified":"2018-06-17T09:31:57","modified_gmt":"2018-06-17T14:31:57","slug":"dislocations-and-shutdowns-mlk-blm-and-the-rhetoric-of-confrontation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2018\/06\/dislocations-and-shutdowns-mlk-blm-and-the-rhetoric-of-confrontation.html","title":{"rendered":"Dislocations and Shutdowns: #MLK, #BLM and the Rhetoric of Confrontation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>On April 4, 2018, America commemorated the 50th year anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The social media landscape was full of think pieces, editorials, long-form essays and reflections that centered on the life and legacy of America\u2019s prophet of nonviolence. News stations and newspapers from all around the world produced stories and interviewed people who lived during King\u2019s time and those who did not. However, much of the commemoration focused on the memory of King and how his words continue to shape and frame our current challenges and problems.<\/p>\n

Anticipating the conversations that would take place during the 50th year commemoration, I thought that a journal in our discipline should devote a special issue that examines the rhetoric of King. I thought this would give scholars in our field an opportunity to (re)discover the rhetoric of King and to study one of America\u2019s finest orators. It would also give us the opportunity to add to what is a surprisingly small collection of scholarship solely devoted to the rhetoric of King. To give a comparison, a search in the Communication and Mass Media index reveals a shocking discovery. Since his assassination in 1968, only thirty-five articles examine the rhetoric of King. Compare this to articles examining the rhetoric of President Barack Obama. Since 2005, seventy-nine articles examine the rhetoric of Obama. Therefore, despite Edwin Black\u2019s observations that King left a very \u201cconsiderable body of written work\u2014speeches, articles and books\u201d and that King\u2019s \u201cinfluence on the character of public persuasion is by itself sufficient to regard King\u2019s rhetorical efforts as revolutionary,\u201d the dearth of scholarship in rhetoric on King speaks volumes.2<\/p>\n

However, I did not want to lock King in the past. The commemorations that occurred throughout the world pointed to contemporary understanding and meanings of King\u2019s rhetoric. We wanted essays that would not only ground themselves in the rhetoric of King but also point to his legacy 50 years later after his death. We looked for essays that centered on people, groups or institutions that draw inspiration from King\u2019s rhetoric. In short, in this special issue, \u201cFrom the Mountain Top and Beyond: Contemporary Meanings and Understandings of the Rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr., 50 Years Later,\u201d we sought to connect the historical to the contemporary to show the vibrancy of King\u2019s rhetoric and how people interpret that rhetoric today.<\/p>\n

The idea for this special issue came to me while teaching a graduate seminar on King\u2019s rhetoric. As we focused on the last year of King\u2019s public discourse, I begin to see and understand the shift in King\u2019s rhetoric. As Sunnemark noted in his study of King, the pre-1965, King had what he called a \u201ccommon discourse.\u201d According to Sunnemark, this was an \u201cinviting discourse,\u201d focused on \u201crecognition and affirmation\u201d that was meant to be \u201cnon-offensive\u201d to as many people as possible. This, argued Sunnemark, opens the rhetoric to multiple interpretations when employed today. \u201cThe vague generality,\u201d wrote Sunnemark, \u201cmeans that King\u2019s rhetoric can still be filled with meaning from different sources. It can still confirm a particular identity of traditional American ideology and self-understanding and its system of signification has become tied in with this identity.\u201d He further maintains that this is how King has become frozen in time with his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech. The speech, argues Sunnemark, has become a signifier of righteousness which means people can use it in a \u201cwide range of circumstances for a variety of means.\u201d However, according to Sunnemark, King\u2019s rhetoric later in his life \u201cis not available for use in this manner.\u201d He argues that since King\u2019s transformation meant the \u201cgradual disintegration of the Civil Rights movement discourse,\u201d one cannot fill it with different kinds of meaning in the same way his one could fill his earlier discourses. For Sunnemark, his later rhetoric poses a grave challenge and makes an accusation, and that is much harder to handle and use than an affirmation.\u201d So to compensate for this, we tend to misread King\u2019s rhetoric during his later life.<\/p>\n

I argue that this misreading of King\u2019s later rhetoric, especially in the last year of his life, leads to a misremembering of King\u2019s legacy and the challenge that King left.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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On April 4, 2018, America commemorated the 50th year anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The social media landscape was full of think pieces, editorials, long-form essays and reflections that centered on the life and legacy of America\u2019s prophet of nonviolence. News stations and newspapers from all around the world produced stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[61,352,846,847,30,56],"class_list":["post-6362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andre-e-johnson","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-journal-of-contemporary-rhetoric","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-mlk","tag-racism","tag-rhetoric"],"yoast_head":"\nDislocations and Shutdowns: #MLK, #BLM and the Rhetoric of Confrontation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did Martin Luther King's rhetoric near the end of his life inspire the Black Lives Matter Movement?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2018\/06\/dislocations-and-shutdowns-mlk-blm-and-the-rhetoric-of-confrontation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dislocations and Shutdowns: #MLK, #BLM and the Rhetoric of Confrontation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Did Martin Luther King's rhetoric near the end of his life inspire the Black Lives Matter Movement?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2018\/06\/dislocations-and-shutdowns-mlk-blm-and-the-rhetoric-of-confrontation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-06-17T14:31:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/files\/2016\/07\/memhis-march-300x169.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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