Activity
Time:
Book Launch: Casey Kelly’s ‘Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment’
Date:
5:30 pm –
7:30 pm
Francie & Finch Bookstore
Target Audiences:
130 S. 13th St.
Lincoln NE 68508
Lincoln NE 68508
Contact:
Angela Palmer-Wackerly , apalmer-wackerly2@unl.edu
Please join us on Thursday, October 26, 2023 from 5:30-7:30 PM at Francie & Finch Bookshop for refreshments, socializing, celebration, and an armchair conversation between Dr. Justin Kirk and Dr. Kelly about the book. Copies of the book will be on sale courtesy of Francie & Finch, and Casey will sign them at the event.
About the book (from the publisher):
In a surveillance culture, the ubiquity of audio-visual recording devices has enabled the unprecedented documentation of private indiscretions, scandalous conversations, and obscene behaviors performed by both ordinary and high-profile people. From former President Donald J. Trump’s lewd banter on the infamous Access Hollywood video and leaked audio of celebrity racist tirades to outburst of violent hate speech posted daily to YouTube, contemporary media culture is awash in obscene performances of transgressive white masculinity. Such exposés are screened and viewed under the assumption that revealing secret prejudices will necessarily realize the promises of democracy and bring about a postracial and postfeminist future. This book addresses why the culture of public revelations has failed to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Caught on Tape illustrates how public revelations constitute a symbolic and imaginary world for the public that is preoccupied with the obscene enjoyment of transgressive white masculinity: a compulsively repetitive experience of ecstatic and excessive pleasure-in-pain that arises from encounters with that which disturbs, traumatizes, and interrupts illusory notions of our coherent selves and reality. Caught on Tape argues that addressing race and gender inequality with the promise of scandalous hot mics and obscene private videos transforms antiracism and gender justice into disempowering forms of spectatorship that ultimately conceal the structural nature of whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The central argument of this book is that the spectators are the ones really caught on tape.
About Dr. Casey Kelly:
Dr. Casey Ryan Kelly (he/him), Professor, Rhetoric and Public Culture & Director of Graduate Studies, is a rhetorical theorist and critic who investigates the relationship between white masculinity, extremist politics, and networked media culture. He is author of over 40 articles and book chapters as well as five books, including Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (Ohio State University Press 2020), Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment (Oxford University Press, 2023), and Manifesting Violence: White Terrorism and the Rhetoric of Replacement (coauthored with Dr. William J. Sipe, forthcoming 2025, University of Alabama Press). Dr. Kelly is the recipient of numerous awards from the National Communication Association, including the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award and the Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression.
About the book (from the publisher):
In a surveillance culture, the ubiquity of audio-visual recording devices has enabled the unprecedented documentation of private indiscretions, scandalous conversations, and obscene behaviors performed by both ordinary and high-profile people. From former President Donald J. Trump’s lewd banter on the infamous Access Hollywood video and leaked audio of celebrity racist tirades to outburst of violent hate speech posted daily to YouTube, contemporary media culture is awash in obscene performances of transgressive white masculinity. Such exposés are screened and viewed under the assumption that revealing secret prejudices will necessarily realize the promises of democracy and bring about a postracial and postfeminist future. This book addresses why the culture of public revelations has failed to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Caught on Tape illustrates how public revelations constitute a symbolic and imaginary world for the public that is preoccupied with the obscene enjoyment of transgressive white masculinity: a compulsively repetitive experience of ecstatic and excessive pleasure-in-pain that arises from encounters with that which disturbs, traumatizes, and interrupts illusory notions of our coherent selves and reality. Caught on Tape argues that addressing race and gender inequality with the promise of scandalous hot mics and obscene private videos transforms antiracism and gender justice into disempowering forms of spectatorship that ultimately conceal the structural nature of whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The central argument of this book is that the spectators are the ones really caught on tape.
About Dr. Casey Kelly:
Dr. Casey Ryan Kelly (he/him), Professor, Rhetoric and Public Culture & Director of Graduate Studies, is a rhetorical theorist and critic who investigates the relationship between white masculinity, extremist politics, and networked media culture. He is author of over 40 articles and book chapters as well as five books, including Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (Ohio State University Press 2020), Caught on Tape: White Masculinity and Obscene Enjoyment (Oxford University Press, 2023), and Manifesting Violence: White Terrorism and the Rhetoric of Replacement (coauthored with Dr. William J. Sipe, forthcoming 2025, University of Alabama Press). Dr. Kelly is the recipient of numerous awards from the National Communication Association, including the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award and the Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression.
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This event originated in Communication Studies.