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"When Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, the perversion of the highest office in the land. In his bold, groundbreaking book Political Perversion, rhetorician Joshua Gunn argues that this "mean-spirited turn" in American politics (of which Trump is the paragon) is best understood as a structural perversion enhanced primarily by the speed of communication technologies. Drawing on insights from critical theory, media ecology, and psychoanalysis, Gunn argues that perverse rhetorics dominate not only the political sphere but also our daily interactions with others, in person and online. From sexting to campaign rhetoric, Gunn shows how technology has changed our ways of relating (and not relating) to others and has engendered infantile and sadistic forms of provocation and enjoyment. In this book, Trump is only the tip of a sinister, rapidly growing iceberg, one to which we ourselves unwittingly contribute on a daily basis"--

Traces Walter Benjamin's use of the word "magic" to shed light on his theoretical path from a preoccupation with pure language to a later fixation on history. His concept of magic clarifies numerous themes that are woven throughout his work, from mysticism, to death, to the eventual reduction of magic to strategies involved in using words to propel people to political action. Benjamin's early sense of the magical quality of pure language, its fundamental ambiguity, & its effect on people are examined, along with his notion of magic as the space in which "material reality communes with itself in language." Attention is given to the absence of magic in major works produced in the 1920s & its reappearance in 1930 as a spatialized term situated in a past experience of distance from objects of art. It is noted that his last essay, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," introduces the notion that true magic denies death in "flashes" of the past. Benjamin's distinctions between good magic, false magic, & correct magic are discussed. J. Lindroth

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction -- Part I Genders -- Dark Admissions -- Queens of the Damned -- Peri Gothous -- Men in Black -- Part II Performances -- This Modern Goth (Explains Herself) -- Playing Dress Up -- Undead Fashion -- ''Goth Damage'' and Melancholia -- Part III Localities -- ''To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant'' -- ''Ah am witness to its authenticity'' -- The (Un)Australian Goth -- Part IV Artifacts -- Atrocity Exhibitions -- Material Distinctions -- Geek/Goth -- The Authentic Dracula -- Part V Communities -- ''When you kiss me, I want to die'' -- The Cure, the Community, the Contempt! -- ''We are all individuals, but we've all got the same boots on!'' -- Part VI Practices -- That Obscure Object of Desire Revisited -- God's Own Medicine -- Gothic Fetishism -- The Aesthetic Apostasy -- References -- Contributors -- Index

This book explores the ways that scholars, journalists, politicians, and citizens conceive of "the public" or "public life," and how those entities are defined and invented. For decades, scholars have used the metaphors of spheres, systems, webs, or networks to talk about, describe, and map various practices. This volume proposes a new metaphor-modalities-to suggest that publics are forever in flux, and much more fluid and dynamic than the static models of systems or spheres would indicate-especially in the digital age, where various publics rapidly evolve and dissipate. Contributors to th