Defense Date

4-19-2011

Graduation Date

2011

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Communication and Rhetorical Studies

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Ronald Arnett

Committee Member

Calvin Troup

Committee Member

Janie Harden-Fritz

Keywords

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reconciliation, Rhetoric, Sociality, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ubuntu

Abstract

Reconciliation may broadly be considered as the repairing, restoring, and mending of that which has been broken, namely relationships be they interpersonal, communal, or national due to some type of conflict between two parties. This project seeks to establish a Rhetoric of Reconciliation as a narratively constructed ethical communicative praxis. The first chapter will consist of an overview of reconciliation. In the second chapter the major theoretical frameworks and scholarship in the field of reconciliation will be considered to establish a working understanding of the particular communicative processes of reconciliation and how these processes are narratively grounded. The major theoretical frames will consist of Judicial, Social-Psychological, and Religious perspectives. The third chapter of this project will inquire how the narrative faith perspective of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Bonhoeffer's notion of reconciliation, which is grounded in his theological and philosophical construction of the self, other, church and community, may inform reconciliation. Furthermore, this project will take into consideration Bonhoeffer's ethic of responsibility as that step of faith or praxis in the reconciliation process that moves beyond the theoretical to engage a rhetoric of reconciliation in action. The fourth chapter will review South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a case study of the process of reconciliation grounded in a narratively situated religious and cultural perspective and a discussion of pragmatic implications and further research on a rhetoric of reconciliation.

Format

PDF

Language

English

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