Varieties of No

Abstract

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the putatively corrosive power of negativity on American politics and culture. This article focuses, instead, not on the ethics of negativity but on the less studied distinctions between simpler and complex negativity strategies, rhetorically and performatively. Negativity strategies are examined across a continuum from the conventional (i.e., simple, credibility-damaging attack) to more complex negativities marked by irony, inspiration, and poetics. The article’s frame of reference includes, but is not limited to, the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign that matched incumbent Democrat Barack Obama against his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.