Jon Radwan Publishes New Book on Ethics in Contact Rhetoric

Jon Radwan, Ph.D., has recently published his latest work, Ethics in Contact Rhetoric: Communication and the Dance of Bodies and Power. Co-authored with Dale Cyphert, Ellen W. Gorsevski and Omar Swartz, it is the newest addition to Lexington’s "Studies in Contemporary Rhetoric" series. The book is aspirational, aiming to reorient communication theory by centering touch and decentering symbolic acts. Inspired by MLK’s tradition of nonviolent power, a contact orientation highlights the incarnate and immediate ground of communication ethics.

Radwan is an associate professor and director of Seton Hall’s Institute for Communication and Religion. In a promotional interview, he explained how contact theory was developed:

For many years, I have been studying how touch communicates. Haptics and aesthetics offer an important counterbalance to modernity’s discursive understanding of meaning and ethics. Following Kenneth Burke, a social, muscular and materially real ‘dance’ underpins life’s continuous ‘drama.’ To detail influential contact, I studied Benedict XVI’s encyclical ‘God is Love’ and wrote about his teaching on ‘turning hearts.’ The Word is important, but immediate practices embodying care are the way to incarnate divine love and inspire conversion. When I explained contact rhetoric to scholars outside of religious communication, there was a great deal of interest. Before long, a research team came together to study how dance terms enable ethical criticism across all contact cycles, including violent ones.

Ellen W. Gorsevski, Ph.D., highlighted teamwork and the critical nature of the project, remarking, “This book represents several years of our collaboration as coauthors and colleagues, led by the indefatigable Jon Radwan. Our explorations and findings in theorizing and applying a contact orientation to communication will challenge, vex and illuminate rhetoricians — past, present and future.”

Co-author Dale Cyphert expressed enthusiasm for the book’s unique approach, stating,

After years of trying to understand physical modes of communication as a non-something — nonverbal, nonsymbolic, nonliterate — I was delighted to finally work within a framework that takes physical contact as the starting place. This vocabulary is rich enough to describe complex cycles twining actions and reactions, resistances and embraces. Attending to people moving in space over time, rhetoricians can now unpack social power and the finely nuanced experience of physically being together in the world.

The book challenges media theory by shifting communication’s focal point from symbolic acts to physical contact. Where media work to disembody rhetors and emphasize individual agency over collective action, touch is co-felt and dance steps are physically real relational performances. By developing a “choreutic” account of embodied communication cycles, the authors recontextualize symbolism and provide insight into the role of rhetoric in social injustice and cultural transformation. To illustrate “relational gyres,” compelling case studies examine colonial human rights rhetoric, sabotage, nuclear deterrence, interspecies communication, bar fights, an insurrection, nonviolent direct action and terrorism.

Omar Swartz emphasized the book’s importance for educators, explaining,

A contact perspective is useful for me as a teacher and has grown organically out of my experience in the classroom. It recognizes that students come with a series of overlapping and sometimes contradictory orientations, a hodgepodge of mixed ‘social dances’ that make sense on their own terms. Identity is constituted through the dynamics of communication, and the classroom can be a crucial space to examine and exemplify these dynamics.

Editorial reviews are positive. Janie M.H. Fritz endorsed the book, exclaiming, “Here is rhetoric in a genuinely new key. Astounding!” With its haptic approach to rhetoric and communication ethics, "Ethics in Contact Rhetoric" introduces a new paradigm. The book is expected to engage scholars, educators and professionals seeking to ground meaning in relationships, community and biomaterial reality. Ultimately, the authors pose a challenge and offer a prayer.

Radwan concluded,

Up close and personal, meaning is incarnated and value is felt in joint movement. As we grapple with daily challenges in interdependence and social being, let us dare to balance and integrate. Violence, domination and strife are not unpredictable chaotic forces, they are skewed relational cycles that can be analyzed and righted. Justice, mercy and beloved community are not impossible abstractions, they are physical performances open to observation, teaching and repetition. May all join all and swing temples of integral balance.

About the Institute for Communication and Religion
The Institute for Communication and Religion is an affiliated unit within Seton Hall University’s College of Human Development, Culture and Media. Religious traditions are primary drivers for social action across humanity’s full moral range, from care through violence. Launched with THRUST funding in fall 2017, the institute is an interdisciplinary nexus for communication and media scholarship addressing the critical intersection between religion and society.

Guided by "Nostra Aetate’s" spirit of ecumenical and interreligious cooperation, the institute seeks to engage in public dialogue and debate, promote academic inquiry and support religious dimensions of creativity. Our values are Seton Hall University values: servant leadership, curricular innovation and intellectual excellence.

For more information, visit the Institute for Communication and Religion.

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