Description:
This volume analyzes how public rhetoric, argumentation, and discourse led to the successful change in government in South Africa. Intended for scholars and students in rhetoric, speech, political communication, persuasion, and related areas.
Review Quotes:
"...a compelling account of the complex, multilayered rhetorical activity of nation-building. Perhaps most importantly, An African Athens is an attempt to highlight what Salazar calls a 'a new political ecology of rhetoric, ' an account of a democracy 'built on a sanguine belief in human rights in the fullest extent of the expression' that takes us beyond liberal accounts placing nation-building solely within the domain of the privileged. Because Salazar represents such rhetorical activity as a fluid, ever emerging process of public and popular deliberations, which situates Africa as sort of 'laboratory for democracy, ' he succeeds in providing a context from which future rhetorical theories of nation-building can emerge and prosper. As such, this book promises to be of major interest to scholars of rhetoric (specifically the study of political and public rhetoric), social movements, and political scientists interested in the shaping and reshaping of democracies."
--Issues in Writing