Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture

Synopsis

Fake News, Alternative Facts, Post Truth - Terms All Too Familiar To Anyone In U.s. Political Culture And Concepts At The Core Of Dana L. Cloud's New Book, Reality Bites, Which Explores Truth Claims In Contemporary Political Rhetoric In The Face Of Widespread Skepticism Regarding The Utility, Ethics, And Viability Of An Empirical Standard For Political Truths. Cloud Observes How Appeals To Truth Often Assume - Mistakenly - That It Is A Matter Of Simple Representation Of Facts. However, Since Neither Fact-checking Nor Truthiness Can Respond Meaningfully To This Problem, She Argues For A Rhetorical Realism - The Idea That Communicators Can Bring Knowledge From Particular Perspectives And Experiences Into The Domain Of Common Sense. Through A Series Of Case Studies - Including The Politifact Fact-checking Project, The Planned Parenthood Selling Baby Parts Scandal, The Chelsea Manning And Edward Snowden Cases, Neil Degrasse Tyson's Cosmos, The Rhetoric Of Thomas Paine And The American Revolution, And The Black Lives Matter Movement - Cloud Advocates For The Usefulness Of Narrative, Myth, Embodiment, Affect, And Spectacle In Creating Accountability In Contemporary U.s. Political Rhetoric. If Dominant Reality Bites - In Being Oppressive And Exploitative - It Is Time, Cloud Argues, For Those In The Reality-based Community To Bite Back--from Back Cover. Rhetorical Realism, Or, Theory In The Real World. Realism's Bad Rap: Structuralism, Poststructuralism, And Postmodernism ; Theory And Reality ; Rhetoric As A Resource For A Critical Realism ; The Rhetorical Study Of Science: Understanding Mediation ; Mediation In Public Spheres ; Marxism As A Resource For Rhetorical Realism ; Conclusion: Mediation, Standpoint, Fidelity -- Toward A Spectacular Struggle, Or, On The Power Of The Big Five. Affect And Emotion ; Embodiment ; Narrative And Myth ; Spectacle And Celebrity ; What About Humor? ; Two Problems By Way Of Conclusion -- Pants On Fire! On The Rhetoric Of Fact-checking In U.s. Political Culture. The Explosion Of Fact-checking ; The Complexity Of Falsehood ; A Quantitative Mode Of Propaganda: An Example ; Alternative Critical Approaches ; Frame-checking The Abortion Video Controversy ; Fact-checkers' Responses ; Alternative Framing Strategies ; Conclusion: Frame-checking As Perspective And Method -- Framing Whistleblowers--secret Agents And Queer Failure. News Narratives And Media Framing ; The Importance Of Mediation And Media(tion) Frames ; Framing Edward Snowden ; Framing Chelsea Manning ; Conclusion: Manning's Queer Failure -- Cosmos And The Big Five Bang. Ordering The Cosmos ; Cosmos And The Big Five ; Nuclear Contradictions ; An Excursus On Rhetorical And Scientific Education ; Cosmic Pedagogy -- From Thomas Paine To #blacklivesmatter: The Tasks Of Making Revolutionary Common Sense. Common Sense: New Form, New Vision ; Paine And The Big Five ; Paine's Implicit Theory Of Ideology And Mediation ; The Paine Of Our Time: Public ; Intellectuals, #blacklivesmatter, And Social Revolution ; Conclusion: The Revolutionary Intervention Of Common Sense -- Conclusion: The Fact Of Our Crisis. Dana L. Cloud. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 191-207) And Index.