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xi I owe much to the rhetorical theorists cited in the text. Thanks in particular to Janet Atwill, Barb Biesecker, and Deb Hawhee for their example and for their scholarship. I also owe much that is not explicit in the text to Victor Villanueva for those conversations about racism that I never could get over, and to Victor Vitanza for showing me what is possible in rhetorical theory. I am indebted as well to the students who participated in a seminar on the rhetoric of liberalism offered long ago at the University of Iowa and to Fred Antczak, who team-taught it with me. Steve Mailloux was once again asked to read a prospectus I had written, and he recklessly recommended to the publishers that they consider it. I am grateful to him and to other, anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their useful comments. Of course the usual disclaimer applies: none of my factual errors or misguided opinions can be attributed to anyone else. Nancy Gutierrez negotiated a year’s leave of absence from my teaching duties in 2003. Thanks, Nancy. I also thank the editors at the University of Pittsburgh Press for the courteous way in which they do business. I am indebted, as always, to my sisters, Kay Conway Bridenbaugh and Pat Conway Allen, for their exemplary strength. The composition of this book also owes much to my neighbors, Betty and Marv Ruckman, who are always there when they are needed by the reclusive academic who lives next door. I owe a particular debt to Katherine Heenan and Jan Norton, who read draft after draft of this stuff and offered sobering advice (the only sobriety to be had on some occasions). Michael Stancliff talked me through the early chapters while we were supposed to be working on something else. Katherine, Jan, and Colleen O’Neill gave unstinting support during ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xii aCknowleDgmenTS Spooky’s long last days. Colleen is my best source for how politics are playing out on the ground, as well as a lively participant in phone conversations that imagine the farthest possible reaches of global conspiracy. Thank you all. Margaret Fuller has once again slept through a lengthy process of composition , and as always I am grateful for her substantial presence close by my elbow. This book is dedicated to the memory of a savvy man and a dear friend who carved out a safe space for invention within the walls of an unimaginative and unforgiving institution. Although Bryan was a critic of presence , he personified it. The space created by his absence can never be filled with quite the same verve and style. Tilly Warnock once remarked that writers need to let the lawn die. So all writers should be so lucky as to live in the desert. This book was written in the purple shadow of the Superstition Mountains. Arizona is my topos, a place where you can invent with the windows open. ...

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