Rhetorical Republic brings together some of the most imaginative theorists from the fields of politics and literature to reflect on how practices of representation in popular culture, the news media, and the law have come to constitute the primary instruments of political governance in the United States. The editors argue that today the struggle over the representation of politics is at least as important as the struggle over power as it has been traditionally conceived.

Discussing topics as diverse as Ronald Reagan's nose and its role in the Iran/Contra scandal, the impermanence of the trope of national security, and the prospect for a reembodied liberalism, Rhetorical Republic surveys the American scene with creativity and rigor. The result is an unprecedented analysis, critique, and prescriptive study of the United States as a postmodern polity in which attention to representation, in the broadest and most heterodox sense of the term, is fundamental to understanding American governance.