Abstract
Jay examines the use of Aristotle’s appeals of ethos and pathos in the rhetoric of President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, which is found in the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s official documents and public oratory shared in support of the initiative. Using the work of Michel Foucault, this chapter unpacks how responsibility is constructed not solely through logos (e.g. argumentation, statistics, facts) but through ethical and emotional appeals. This results in self-governed individuals with the power to implement the Common Core—state government officials and public school administrators—doing so out of sense of personal duty, not because they are ordered to by the Obama Administration.
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39850-1_10
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Bowen, Daniel H. 2010. Politics and the Scoring of the Race to the Top Applications. American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/publication/politics-and-the-scoring-of-race-to-the-top-applications. Last modified 10 Sept 2010.
Chaput, Catherine. 2010. Rhetorical Circulation in Late Capitalism: Neoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective Energy. Philosophy and Rhetoric 43(1): 1–25.
Chaput, Catherine, and Joshua S. Hanan. 2015. Economic Rhetoric as Taxis. Journal of Cultural Economy 8(1): 42–61. doi:10.1080/17530350.2014.942349 .Accessed 10 Aug 2015
Colebrook, Claire. 1998. Ethics, Positivity, and Gender: Foucault, Aristotle, and the Care of the Self. Philosophy Today 42(1): 40–52.
Dean, Jodi. 2005. Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics. Cultural Politics 1(1): 51–74.
Dean, Mitchell. 2010. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Duncan, Arne. 2009a. Partners in Reform: Address to the National Education Association. Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/07/07022009.pdf. Last modified 2 Jul 2009.
———. 2009b. Robust Data Gives Us the Roadmap to Reforms: Address at the Fourth Annual Institute of Education Sciences Research Conference. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/robust-data-gives-us-roadmap-reform. Last modified 8 June 2009.
———. 2009c. States Will Lead the Way to Reform: Address at the 2009 Governors Education Symposium. Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/06/06142009.pdf. Last modified 14 June 2009.
———. 2009d. Turning Around the Bottom 5 Percent: Address at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference. Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/news/speeches/2009/06/06222009.pdf. Last modified 22 June 2009.
Foucault, Michel. 1988. Technologies of the Self. In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
———. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Picador.
Goodnight, G. Thomas.1989. Toward a Social Theory of Argumentation. Argumentation and Advocacy 26: 60–70.
———. 2012. The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation. Argumentation and Advocacy 48: 198–210.
Greene, Ronald Walter. 2004. Rhetoric and Capitalism: Rhetorical Agency as Communicative Labor. Philosophy and Rhetoric 37(4): 188–206.
———. 2007. Rhetorical Capital: Communicative Labor, Money/Speech, and Neo-Liberal Governance. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4(3): 327–331.
Greene, Ronald Walter, and Darrin Hicks. 2005. Lost Convictions: Debating Both Sides and the Ethical Self-Fashioning of Liberal Citizens. Cultural Studies 19(1): 100–126.
Grusin, Richard. 2010. Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Jay, Samuel M. 2014. Governing Confidence: Rhetoric, Affect, and Post-Crisis Financial Education. PhD dissertation. University of Denver. ProQuest (3641996).
Lemke, Thomas. 2001. ‘The Birth of Bio-Politics’—Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality. Economy and Society 30(2): 190–207.
Miller, Tiffany D. and Robert Hanna. 2014. Four Years Later, Are Race to Top States on Track? Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/03/24/86197/four-years-later-are-race-to-the-top-states-on-track Last modified 24 Mar 2014. Note to Paginators and QC: we are raised the query to CE for new reference afer reply from CE need to annotate the reference.
Miller, Toby. 1993. The Well-Tempered Self. Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
New Oxford American Dictionary. s.v. “capacity.”
Nine States and the District of Columbia Win Second Round Race to the Top Grants. 2010. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/nine-states-and-district-columbia-win-second-round-race-top-grants. Last modified 24 Aug 2010.
Obama, President Barack. 2009. Remarks by the President on Education. Office of the Press Secretary. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-Department-of-Education. Last modified 24 Jul 2009.
Race to the Top Program Executive Summary. 2009. Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf. Last modified 4 Nov 2009.
Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Inventiveness in Politics. Economy and Society 28(3): 467–493.
Setting the Pace: Expanding Opportunity for America’s Students Under Race to the Top. 2014. Department of Education. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/settingthepacerttreport_3-2414_b.pdf. Last modified 24 Mar 2014.
Shear, Michael D, and Nick Anderson. 2009. President Obama Discusses New ‘Race to the Top’ Program. The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/23/AR2009072302938.html. Last modified 23 Jul 2009.
The Office of the Press Secretary. 2009. Fact Sheet: The Race to the Top. WhiteHouse.gov. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/fact-sheet-race-top. Last modified 4 Nov 2009.
Weiss, Elaine. 2013. Mismatches in Race to the Top Limit Educational Improvemen. Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/publication/race-to-the-top-goals. Last modified 12 Sept 2013.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jay, S.M. (2017). The Capable American: Ethos, Pathos, and the Governance of Education. In: Nguyen, K. (eds) Rhetoric in Neoliberalism . Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39850-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39850-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39849-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39850-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)