{"id":27136,"date":"2025-09-12T13:42:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T17:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/?p=27136"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T14:22:36","slug":"professor-stuart-murray-has-published-new-articles-in-rhetoric-society-quarterly-and-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/2025\/professor-stuart-murray-has-published-new-articles-in-rhetoric-society-quarterly-and-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Stuart Murray has published new articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly and The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Professor Stuart Murray has published new articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly and The Conversation\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stuart Murray<\/a> has published new articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly<\/em> and in The Conversation. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empathy as Bug: The Rhetoric of MAGA\u2019s \u201cBattle\u201d<\/em><\/a> in Rhetoric Society Quarterly<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n

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This essay critiques the rhetorical displacement of empathy by sympathy in contemporary political discourse, especially within digital media ecologies dominated by memes, grievance, and identitarian performativity. Beginning with Elon Musk\u2019s claim that empathy is \u201ccivilizational suicide,\u201d the essay traces how sympathetic identification\u2014rooted in sameness and affective fusion\u2014has supplanted empathy\u2019s difficult labor of encountering difference. Drawing on rhetorical theory, affect studies, and close readings of memes, the essay analyzes how contemporary rhetorics (including on the Left) impede the slow, uncertain, and unsentimental work that empathy requires. Turning to Hannah Arendt\u2019s Eichmann in Jerusalem<\/em> and theories of rhetorical empathy, the essay reframes empathy not as moral sentiment but as agonistic hearkening\u2014a practice of nonidentical attunement amid algorithmic closure. Ultimately, it calls for rhetorical scholars to reclaim empathy as a counter-rhetorical and ontological necessity in the face of post-truth tribalism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

From \u2018God Emperor Trump\u2019 to \u2018St. Luigi,\u2019 memes power the politics of feeling<\/em><\/a> in The Conversation:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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A meme is a decontextualized video or image \u2014 often captioned \u2014 that circulates an idea, behaviour or style, primarily through social media. As they spread, memes are adapted, remixed and transformed, helping to solidify the communities around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do images of Donald Trump as a galactic emperor or Luigi Mangione<\/a> as a Catholic saint<\/a> resonate so deeply with some people? Memes don\u2019t just entertain \u2014 they shape how we identify with power, grievance and justice in the digital age.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Stuart Murray has published new articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly and in The Conversation.  Empathy as Bug: The Rhetoric of MAGA\u2019s \u201cBattle\u201d in Rhetoric Society Quarterly: This essay critiques the rhetorical displacement of empathy by sympathy in contemporary political discourse, especially within digital media ecologies dominated by memes, grievance, and identitarian performativity. Beginning with Elon Musk\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":27138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[144,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-publications","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27139,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27136\/revisions\/27139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}