Lynching

Fecund, provocative, and contemporarily resonant, Lynching makes at least three significant contributions: One, in addition to its cultural studies, political science, black studies, and historical lens, it reads lynching through a rhetorical method/analysis. Two, this approach allows the author to revitalize and repurpose heretofore both well-known, previously quoted material as well as less cited archival material/content to different effect and affect. As a result, tethering the primal terrain of literal lynching to Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, and former President Barack Obama makes the lynching trope contemporarily relevant. Three, and maybe most significantly, Ore makes clear that lynching was not excessive or incidental to state power, but rather that lynching was/is 'organic to civil society' reflecting the racial order of things. Lynching is a provocative, trenchant, very relevant rhetorical analysis of the ongoing force of the lynching trope. Because it is both historically anchored and currently relevant, Lynching may evoke a sense of significance for an extended period of time.--Vorris L. Nunley, associate professor of English and rhetorical studies, University of California, Riverside
In addition to being profoundly instructive regarding the ways U.S. national identity forms around lynched Black bodies, which Ore argues function as "a powerfully persuasive symbol of antiblack citizenship," Lynching helps us understand that the lynch mob does its work, often quietly, in the hallways of our predominantly white institutions, on the pages of our books and journals, and in various other spaces where academic labor takes place.--Bryan J. McCann, Louisiana State University "Quarterly Journal of Speech"
Ultimately, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity makes undeniable the life-and-death stakes of this work and the proximity of trauma for Black scholars, a reminder to the field that's both painful and affirming.--Morgan K. Johnson "Rhetoric Society Quarterly 2020, Vol. 50, No. 1"