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"The Reality of American Life Has Strayed From Its Myths": Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and the Discourse of the American Reclamation Jeremiad

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wharrell{at}kent.edu.

	Abstract

This article argues that Barack Obama’s restoration rhetoric in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream functions as the American reclamation jeremiad, in which he employs political discourse to restore a positive vision of America’s democratic mission and warns Americans of the dangers of not fulfilling that mission. While Obama combines this ideological warning to his positive vision of America, he constructs a message that is unifying while at the same time indicative of a risk in not challenging the destructive path of the American political system. In the classic jeremiadic fashion, Obama calls Americans to political repentance, an innovative kind of political system that builds on the communal understandings that will unite all Americans.

First published on July 15, 2009
Journal of Black Studies 2009, doi:10.1177/0021934709338003


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