Imagine There's No President: The Rhetorical Secret and the Exposure of Valerie Plame

Covering a wide range of public discourse from 2003 to 2010 about CIA agent Valerie Plame, this essay contributes a novel rhetorical theory of secrets. By contrast to other critiques of the Bush-era secrecy that focus on policies the administration kept concealed from the public, I suggest that rhet...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Quarterly journal of speech Vol. 101; no. 2; pp. 354 - 378
Main Author Hallsby, Atilla
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia Routledge 03.04.2015
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Caesura
Discourse analysis
Knowledge
Psychoanalysis
Repetition
Rhetoric
Rhetorical Theory
Secret
Synecdoche
Valerie Plame
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Summary:Covering a wide range of public discourse from 2003 to 2010 about CIA agent Valerie Plame, this essay contributes a novel rhetorical theory of secrets. By contrast to other critiques of the Bush-era secrecy that focus on policies the administration kept concealed from the public, I suggest that rhetoric is the means by which subjects figure the secret, to be understood as knowledge in the fact that the subject cannot know. To make this argument, I draw on the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis and the rhetorical tropes of repetition, caesura, and synecdoche.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0033-5630
1479-5779
DOI:10.1080/00335630.2015.1024276