The Department of Anthropology presents

"'God’s Law Indeed is There to Protect You from Yourself': The Christian Personal Testimonial as Narrative and Moral Schemata to the U.S. Political Apology"
with Jennifer Jackson, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
 
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
3:30-5:00 p.m.
Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Room 3323

Jackson's talk will examine the deployment of semiotic devices in several mass-mediated public apologies by U.S. politicians and the reflexive awareness of apology as commodity in national political contexts. Beyond acts of contrition and deliverance from the clutches of sin, apology events are extremely dialogical, salient modes of sociality that reach across, arbitrate, and bond multiple publics. The talk will examine how speakers toggle between particular chronotopes—of time, place, and personhood—to both shape and reflect particular presentation and participation frameworks. Of certain interest is how the Protestant testimonial informs the apology, makes way for, even necessitates future transgression as it shifts proximity between the sin of the Lost and the testimony of the Found, reinstating membership in and reinforcing a moral public.

For further information, please contact Keith Drover, kdrover@uci.edu.