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    Jimmy Swaggart's Secular Confession

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    Tell Swaggart author final.pdf (528.1Kb)
    Issue Date
    2009
    Author
    Tell, Dave
    Publisher
    Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
    Type
    Article
    Article Version
    Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    Following the exposure of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s illicit rendezvous with a New Orleans prostitute, the Assemblies of God simultaneously orchestrated a massive attempt to silence those who would discuss the tryst and arranged the most widely publicized confession in American history theretofore. The coincidence of a “silence campaign” with the vast distribution of a public confession invites us to reconsider the nature of the public confession. For what place has a public confession, the discourse of disclosure par excellence, in a silence campaign? This question is best answered, I argue, if we understand public confession not as a stable a-historical form, but as a practice that is informed by multiple, competing traditions. I argue that by situating Swaggart’s performance in a philosophically modern and secular tradition of public confession we can understand both its complicity in a silence campaign and, more generally, the political logic of the modern public confession.
    Description
    This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version is available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02773940902766748 .
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/9192
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940902766748
    Collections
    • Communication Studies Scholarly Works [156]
    Citation
    Tell, Dave. “Jimmy Swaggart’s Secular Confession.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39.2 (Spring 2009): 124-146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02773940902766748

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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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