Rhetoric of Genocide - (Lexington Studies in Political Communication) by Ben Voth (Paperback)

About the Book

Through the careful analysis of historical figures and empirical policy successes, The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make the tragedy of genocide probable and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil.

Book Synopsis

Genocide represents one of the deadliest scourges of the human experience. Communication practices provide the key missing ingredient toward preventing and ending this intensely symbolic activity. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make this tragedy probable, and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil. Careful analysis of practical historical figures, such as the great debater James Farmer Jr., along with empirical policy successes in places such as Liberia provide a communication-based template for ridding the world of genocide in the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes

Ben Voth provides a well-written analysis of genocide and the role that communication has played in its emergence and perpetuation. Moreover, this important volume imagines a world without genocide and demonstrates how, through communication, this dream can become a reality. It is required reading for anyone who is interested in communication, genocide, or social justice.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the horrors of genocide, both past and current. Dr. Voth makes it wonderfully clear that we need not have these tragedies in our midst, and that there is great power in individual initiative to eradicate genocide from this world.

The Rhetoric of Genocide exhibits the fullness of communication studies: scholarship that is grounded in the rhetorical tradition, informed by participation in the deliberative arts, compelled by a deep sense of civic responsibility, and guided by the perspicacity that within the interplay of those forces resides a panacea for our times. Dr. Voth's effort to introduce a communication framework to the growing body of interdisciplinary work on genocide studies will have broad appeal.

About the Author

Ben Voth is associate professor of communication and director of speech and debate at Southern Methodist University.