Modern Occult Rhetoric by Joshua Gunn PAPERBACK 9780817356569

Modern Occult RhetoricMass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century\nAuthor(s): Joshua Gunn\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: The University of Alabama Press, United States\nImprint: The University of Alabama Press\nISBN-13: 9780817356569, 978-0817356569\nSynopsis\nA broadly interdisciplinary study of the pervasive secrecy in America cultural, political, and religious discourse. The occult has traditionally been understood as the study of secrets of the practice of mysticism or magic. This book broadens our understanding of the occult by treating it as a rhetorical phenomenon tied to language and symbols and more central to American culture than is commonly assumed. Joshua Gunn approaches the occult as an idiom, examining the ways in which acts of textual criticism and interpretation are occultic in nature, as evident in practices as diverse as academic scholarship, Freemasonry, and television production. Gunn probes, for instance, the ways in which jargon employed by var.