Rhetorik als Waffe – über Putins Reden als Mittel der Politik

Presentation of Riccardo Nicolosi: Putins Kriegsrhetorik (Putin’s Rhetoric of War, Konstanz University Press 2024)

The war in Ukraine was rhetorically prepared, escalated, and justified through Vladimir Putin’s sophisticated argumentation. His strategies to legitimize the war may seem disconcerting and disturbing. And yet, they deliberately tie in with the expectations of a broad, national and international audience, guaranteeing a diffuse understanding of the Kremlin’s positions.

In his book, Riccardo Nicolosi dissects Putin’s war communication: from parodies of Western justifications for war to a paranoid causal logic that portrays Russia as the eternal victim of Western hegemonic aspirations; from the affective rhetoric of resentment to the mystification of the Second World War as a never-ending event; from the framing of the conflict in Ukraine as an anti-colonial, tectonic shift in the geopolitical world order to elevating the war as the only true form of existence in contemporary and future Russia. And thus, the power of words legitimizes the martial use of violence as much as it paints war as the universal solution to all problems.

We will present the book with the participation of Riccardo Nicolosi (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) and Susanne Frank (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). The evening will be hosted by Anita Traninger (echo – Center for the Study of Rhetoric between Old and New Media, Freie Universität Berlin).

A cooperation between the ZfL and echo – Center for the Study of Rhetoric between Old and New Media.

Free admission without prior registration.

Fig. above: Cover of Riccardo Nicolosi: Putins Kriegsrhetorik. Konstanz: Konstanz University Press 2024 (detail)