Rhetoric & Public Affairs

Woke Sausages at the Cracker Barrel: Gastronativism and the Synecdochic Politics of Plant-Based Meat

2023-06-18T04:09:54-04:00

In August 2022, the U.S. restaurant chain Cracker Barrel introduced a meatless sausage patty–the “Impossible Sausage”—to its breakfast menu. A viral social media backlash against the restaurant ensued. Using Fabio Parasecoli’s theory of gastronativism as a theoretical lens, we perform a critical rhetorical analysis of online commentaries regarding Cracker Barrel’s Impossible Sausage with an eye toward synecdochal representation. We contend that the online “culture war” that ensued within and beyond Cracker Barrel’s social media pages is representative of plant-based meat alternatives’ gastropolitical resonance in U.S. American identity construction. Two synecdoches emerge through our analysis: the Cracker Barrel restaurant as right-wing sacred space embedded in “tradition” and the Impossible Sausage as a leftist, progressive, contagious intrusion into this space. Discourses of faux-Southern identity, right-wing appeals to traditional ways of life, and white masculine victimhood are entrenched in these synecdochic tropes. Understanding the Cracker Barrel’s meatless menu debacle as a manifestation of gastronativist synecdoche demonstrates the ideological significance of meat and plant-based meat in contemporary U.S. political imaginaries. Given plant-based foods’ increasing popularity among health- and environmentally-conscious consumers, rhetoricians concerned with the intersections of food, power, and identity should take note of how flesh (non)consumption symbolically (re)constructs U.S. American gastropolitical identities.

Poetic Politics

2023-01-27T12:00:05-05:00

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stunned the United States with her captivating recitation of “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” during the 2021 inaugural ceremony for President Biden and Vice President Harris. Analyzing this political poem, we contribute to the rhetorical scholarship of inaugural ceremonies and demonstrate how Gorman’s recitation renews the tradition of Black jeremiads. Specifically, we argue that by weaving together Black rhetorical traditions and inclusive appeals Gorman offered a poetic jeremiad—in which the covenantal history and call to action center Black people within an inclusive national vision. This poetry sutures time, making the past usable and a democratic future possible. Ultimately then, Gorman’s poem channels the rhetorical conventions embedded within American psyches to construct a Black jeremiad that conjures a people committed to democratic action.

Jimmy Carter, Vietnam, and the Rhetoric of Gratitude: Antecedents to the Noble Cause

2022-09-20T13:57:30-04:00

This essay reevaluates the Vietnam War rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and challenges the orthodox view that his Vietnam War discourse was a rhetoric of atonement. I argue that the rhetoric of gratitude best characterizes Carter’s discourse on the Vietnam War. His rhetoric of gratitude privileged the heroism, bravery, and selflessness of Vietnam veterans and placed patriotism at the center of his narrative. Moreover, Carter alternatingly defined the purpose of the war in Southeast Asia as preserving the American way of life, promoting democracy, or defending liberty and freedom. I also argue that there is a consistency to Carter’s rhetorical choices which can be seen by connecting Carter’ pre-presidential political career to his presidential career and by considering his politicization of the war’s veterans. This essay suggests that in exhorting the nation to express gratitude to Vietnam veterans, Carter contributed to a revisionist history of the American experience in Vietnam and that these antecedents to Reagan’s more famous “noble cause” speech constitute an earlier junction point in the ascendency of the celebratory discourse on Vietnam and the war’s veterans.

The Reformer Topos

2023-02-26T13:57:06-05:00

The United States and Middle East monarchies do not make for the most natural of allies. One of the most common rhetorical tactics used to defend these alliances is to portray the Middle East ruler in question as a reformer who is steering his country into alignment with American political, social, or economic norms. We argue that this tactic constitutes a topos most prominently displayed in the attempted reinvention of Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. As their experiences illustrate, this topos is paradoxically self-refuting, helps breed domestic resistance, and alienates U.S. audiences.

A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War

2023-03-21T19:39:14-04:00

Review of Persons of the Market: Conservatism, Corporate Personhood, and Economic Theology

2023-03-15T19:45:04-04:00

Book Review The Rhetoric of Official Apologies: Critical Essays. Edited by Lisa S. Villadsen and Jason A. Edwards. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020; pp. 264, $111.00 hardback; $45.00 eBook.

2023-05-09T16:19:24-04:00

Book review of The Rhetoric of Official Apologies: Critical Essays. Edited by Lisa S. Villadsen and Jason A. Edwards. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020; pp. 264, $111.00 hardback; $45.00 eBook.

Review of Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas

2023-03-21T10:35:42-04:00

When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture

2023-01-18T13:55:21-05:00

Book review of When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture, by

Jenna Supp-Montgomerie.