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The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2012

MELVIN L. ROGERS
MELVIN L. ROGERS*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Melvin L. Rogers is Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, 1540 Jefferson Park Avenue, P.O. Box 400787, Charlottesville, VA 22904 ([email protected]). In June 2012, he will be Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Emory University, 561 S. Kilgo Circle, Bowden Hall, Atlanta, GA 30322.
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Abstract

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work, The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory, Souls draws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 106 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 188 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

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