By JD, submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/08/2008 - 18:38
Rhetoric for Radicals:
A Handbook for Twenty-First Century Activists
By Jason Del Gandio
Link: http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4019
Radicals have important messages to deliver but are too often caught up in the passion of their causes that they lose sight of effective communication—which is their biggest tool. Crucial to the cause is the ability to speak with clarity and intelligence and not to underestimate the challenge of breaking new ground and winning new converts.
Activists often suffer from a credibility gap because of their lack of a coherent message and lack of strategic delivery. Rhetoric for Radicals addresses and helps solve these problems. It provides the all-important communication skills necessary to be effectively heard. If you accept that communication creates the social world, then you will agree that changing the way we communicate can change the world.
Rhetoric for Radicals provides practical guidelines for public speaking, writing, conversation, persuasion, political correctness, propaganda analysis, street theatrics and new languages. Chapters include:
• Streets, Rhetoric, and Revolution
• A Call for Rhetorical Action
• Skills for the Multitude
• The Power of Language
• Body Rhetoric
• Twenty-First Century Radical Rhetoric
Geared to college-aged radical activists and organizers, this book will also appeal to activists of any age who want to sharpen their messages.
Jason Del Gandio is a lecturer at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is a post-Seattle activist who has worked on globalization and free/fair trade issues, anti-war campaigns and Latin American solidarity.
Comments
Re: Rhetoric for Radicals
By Anonymous
>If you accept that communication creates the social world
Just when you thought leftism couldn't get any worse, some more PoMo PR guys come along.
Labour and the reproduction of physical existence creates the social world. lern2marxism
Re: Rhetoric for Radicals
By Anonymous
labour is a form of communication.... see 20th century thought
Re: Rhetoric for Radicals
By CH
Care to elaborate on that? I don't understand how labour = communication, so if you could point to exactly which bit of 20th century thought that comes from it would be helpful.
I'm wary of people thinking that the way to get radical politics more popular would be to make them better-presented. I think the state is always going to win on that battlefield and that our strength lies more in having substance, honesty and authenticity. The hardest things to fake. It doesn't matter how good your rhetoric is, if you're speaking to a community that you aren't part of and pretending otherwise, there's always going to be a communication gap and flashy rhetoric is just going to accentuate it.