Affective Rhetoric and the Cultural Politics of Determinate Negation

Bristow, Tom

Abstract

My analysis of political debate in the United Kingdom during the summer of 2016 unpacks the compression of two highly complex issues within an unprecedented moment in British politics: reinvestment in nuclear arms (Trident) and nuclear energy (Hinkley Point C) during the EU referendum crisis. I recover unities and discontinuities across events in this period and throughout history both to examine the non-identity between the particular and the universal as a major trope in parliamentary rhetoric, which construed the universal sentiment of world peace and denied this in terms of security, and to seek out the use of determinate negation, especially when it has bearing on the advancing of climate-related policies. From nuanced speeches in the House of Commons and House of Lords, I move tentatively outwards by gesturing to the moment of truth in reified concepts, seeking to pry them open in their non-identity with art objects of the Anthropocene that are understood within a context of ecological poetics.

Citation

Bristow, T. (2017). Affective Rhetoric and the Cultural Politics of Determinate Negation. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 22(3), 103-132. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1387374

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Nov 9, 2017
• Publication Date: Nov 9, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 24, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: May 9, 2019
• Journal: Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities
• Print ISSN: 0969-725X
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-2899
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 103-132
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725x.2017.1387374
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1373164