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Ideas are increasingly acknowledged as factors in explaining political behaviour. But often they are treated as inert resources rather than dynamic instances of action in themselves. The latter, I propose, requires reflection on the character of speech -as the medium of ideas -in responding to and refiguring a prevailing situation. I undertake such reflection by setting out a rhetorical approach to political strategy. Building upon 'interpretive' advances in political science I shift the focus from stable cognitive frames to the dynamics of argumentation where ideas work expressively. I then explore the rhetorical aspect of strategising with attention to the way speech serves to orient audiences by creatively re-appropriating a situation.That approach is shown to be consistent with a 'dialectical' political sociology that emphasises the interaction of structure and agency. Finally, I sketch a method for undertaking rhetorical analysis and indicate how it might be applied to a concrete example.

References to 'the political' abound in contemporary political theory, especially of the Continental variety. Some draw this distinction from Carl Schmitt, others from Hannah Arendt, but few really dwell for long on what it means and what its wider implications might be for how we understand politics. Indeed, reference to the political in contrast to 'mere politics' can often seem a condescending snub to those preoccupied with the minutiae of party competition, policy choice or normative evaluation. The term 'political' is irreducible to such matters which, often rightly, are dismissed for their narrow preoccupation with (and legitimation of) the polity and its conventions, as opposed to the more profound question of how polities and conventions come to be instituted as they are. But such dismissal can also fail to set out what is at stake in drawing this distinction and how politics might be drawn back into the realm of the political.In his dense but refreshingly instructive book, Oliver Marchart takes up directly the question of 'political difference' (the difference between the political and politics) and surveys a range of alternative stances on its meaning by some of the key contemporary political philosophers. This is a philosophical narrative restricted to assessing what others have to say on the topic and demonstrating recurring themes. But Marchart fruitfully illuminates the political difference and clarifies the overlaps and variations among what he designates 'post-foundational' political thought.By post-foundational, Marchart understands a strand of thinking that emerges in the wake of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. More precisely, Marchart is interested in a left-wing variant, which emphasizes the emancipatory possibilities of Heidegger's substitution of rational foundations for the notion of an 'Abyssal Ground' to Being. If no principle serves to found all existence, then the difference between specific beings and Being as suchknown as the 'ontological difference' -is insurmountable. 'Ontic', or historically and culturally determined, beings relate to Being as an open-ended range of possibilities rather than as a reflection of their innate features. Being forever exceeds the choices we make as beings and reveals to us the inescapable contingency of existence, which is why, according to Heidegger, we often go to great lengths to 'forget' it.

What insights and advantages do rhetorical approaches offer over other methods of exploring social and political discourse? This article aims to clarify the contribution of rhetorical analysis by exploring its distinctive, hermeneutic attention to public speech. Public speaking is, accordingly, viewed as a practice of assembling meaningful interpretations in specific situations. Central here is a temporal dimension. Analysing rhetoric involves grasping discourse, on the one hand, as concretely situated in response to proximate constraints and, on the other hand, as a medium to move beyond the situation towards a future. Following John Caputo’s reading of Derrida, I argue that, examined rhetorically, public speech enacts a ‘negotiation’ of past and future, intertwining conditional – and hence partially calculable – positions with an ‘unconditional promise’ to prepare for what comes. Although compatible with other approaches, rhetorical analysis is uniquely attuned to this intrinsically ethical and political quality of discursive action.

This article:• Provides a theoretical exploration of rhetorical persuasion as a practice aimed at 'capturing desire'. • Elucidates the shared interest of rhetorical and psychoanalytical theory in the production of so-called 'plausible stories' that mobilise and shape affects. • Surveys different psychoanalytical approaches to the rhetorical articulation of 'symptomatic beliefs' that support political reasoning. • Demonstrates the applicability of psychoanalytical theories to the analysis of a specific example of political speech.In this article I argue that psychoanalytical theory can help us understand the emotional force of political rhetoric. I undertake a theoretical enquiry into the method of interpreting political speeches as strategies of affective persuasion. Both rhetorical and psychoanalytical studies converge in their concern with the production of 'plausible stories' that aim to fold psychic investments into political judgements. To capture desire, I claim, political rhetoric must articulate 'symptomatic beliefs' in relation to wider situational exigencies. I sketch three distinct psychoanalytical approaches, each of which emphasises a different scenario of unconscious organisation where rhetorical strategies are pertinent: namely Freudian, Kleinian, and Lacanian approaches. These are then applied to the example of a controversial rhetorical intervention-Enoch Powell's infamous Birmingham speech of 1968-to demonstrate the various potential foci when undertaking analysis.