The Conscience of Poverty: Rhetoric, Phenomenology, and Work in Contemporary Welfare Reform Debates

This thesis attempts to demonstrate the importance of decoupling the idea of economic productivity from notions of human worth, arguing that these two ideas, when taken together, condemn a population of highly vulnerable people into a rhetorical space in which they are valueless and disposable. Taking as its object of study the deliberations surrounding the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (better known as Welfare Reform), I provide a history of welfare and poverty rhetorics in the Unites States, before turning to analysis of the contemporary welfare debates. Two theoretical perspectives aid in this analysis: Michael Calvin McGee's ideograph, and the phenomenological hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, with particular emphasis on Michael J. Hyde's deployment of Heidegger. Coupling McGee and Heidegger to synthesize a phenomenological account of ideology, I conclude by suggesting potential directions available to critics of rhetoric to begin the work of breaking down the aforementioned degrading rhetorical space.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Gonzalez, Joshua Arturo

• HEIDEGGER

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/30408

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/30408