A Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Frederick Douglass and the Architectonic of African American Radicalism.

Ochieng, Omedi

This study argues that Frederick Douglass articulated a distinctively radical rhetorical stance that searched for a passage through the epistemological antimonies of transcendence and immanence; the ideological antimonies of structure and agency; and the performative antimonies of the actually existing and the utopian. He did so by offering a radical critique of the dominant rhetorical traditions of his time-that of Puritan rhetoric, Lockean liberalism, and herrenvolk Republicanism. Specifically, Douglass challenged the metaphysical presuppositions of Puritanism, demonstrated the contradictions of Lockean liberalism's social contract, and offered a trenchant critique of herrenvolk Republicanism's mobocracy.

UNITED States; DOUGLASS, Frederick, 1818-1895; RADICALISM; AFRICAN Americans; THEORY of knowledge; AFRICAN American radicals; UNITED States history; RADICALS; LIBERALISM; RHETORIC; AFRICAN American radicalism; NINETEENTH century

Western Journal of Communication, 2011, Vol 75, Issue 2, p168

1057-0314

Academic Journal

10.1080/10570314.2011.553874