Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric ― The Texture of Political Action

This volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic elements of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. By emphasizing the texture of political action, the book theorizes how social context becomes evident on the surface of events and analyzes the performative dimensions of political experience. The attention to catastrophe allows for an understanding of how ordinary people contend with normal system operation once it is indistinguishable from system breakdown. Through an array of case studies, the book provides an account of change as it is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society's capacity for political action.

Ralph Cintron has a joint appointment in the Departments of English and Latin American and Latino Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Angels’ Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and Rhetorics of the Everyday, and is completing Democracy as Fetish: Fieldwork, Rhetoric, and the Oligarchic Condition.