Friendship Fictions: The Rhetoric of Citizenship in the Liberal Imaginary

The Rhetoric of Citizenship in the Liberal Imaginary
1. Auflage, 1. Auflage. 1. Auflage, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5938-6
Verlag: Univ of Chicago Behalf of Univ of Alabama

Buch, Englisch, 268 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

Reihe: Rhetoric, Culture, and Social

Friendship serves as a metaphor for citizenship and mirrors the individual's participation in civic life. Friendship Fictions unravels key implications of this metaphor and demonstrates how it can transform liberal culture into a more just and democratic way of life.

A criticism often leveled at liberal democratic culture is its emphasis on the individual over community and private life over civic participation. However, liberal democratic culture has a more complicated relationship to notions of citizenship. As Michael Kaplan shows, citizenship comprises a major theme of popular entertainment, especially Hollywood film, and often takes the form of friendship narratives; and this is no accident. Examining the representations of citizenship-as-friendship in four Hollywood films (The Big Chill, Thelma & Louise, Lost in Translation, and Smoke), Kaplan argues that critics have misunderstood some of liberal democracy's most significant features: its resilience, its capacity for self-revision, and the cultural resonance of its model of citizenship.

For Kaplan, friendship—with its dynamic pacts, fluid alliances, and contingent communities—is one arena in which preconceptions about individual participation in civic life are contested and complicated. Friendship serves as a metaphor for citizenship and mirrors the individual's participation in civic life. Friendship Fictions unravels key implications of this metaphor and demonstrates how it can transform liberal culture into a more just and democratic way of life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaplan, Michael A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Textlinguistik, Diskursanalyse, Stilistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Rhetoricizing Liberalism
- 1. Imagining Citizenship as Friendship
- 2. Friendship and the Politics of Community: The Big Chill
- 3. Friendship, Rebel-Citizenship, and the Feminist Critique of Liberalism: Thelma & Louise
- 4. Liberalism, Friendship, and the Predicament of Cybernetic Sociality: Lost in Translation
- 5. Race, Friendship, and the Speculative Politics of Infinite Debt: Smoke
- Conclusion: The Friendship Supplement and the Rule of Allegory
- Notes
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Michael A. Kaplan is an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at Baruch College, CUNY.