Bush Appeal: "Read My Soul (Not My Lips)".

This article explores the relation between post-modern savviness and an appeal to what might be described as ‘visceral literacy’: the attempt to bypass the slippery medium of language through a direct appeal to ostensibly nondiscursive, bodily evidence, albeit mediated through visual imagery. As an example, the article considers President Bush's appeal both to his own extra-discursive, soul-reading talents and to the ability of his supporters to bypass his own verbal clumsiness to discern the character of the man behind the words. Finally, the article considers the impact of the combination of visceral literacy and skepticism for political deliberation. The paradoxical result of generalized skepticism is not a free-floating relativism but the pairing of relativism with a dogmatic point of fixation, one upon which discourse no longer has any purchase. The potential result might be described, to borrow from the formulation of one political columnist, as the death of deliberative persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]