Jimmy Swaggart's Secular Confession

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Issue Date
2009Author
Tell, Dave
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
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Show full item recordAbstract
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 .
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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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