My project explores the rhetorical work of sacrificial logic in security discourse –when violence is constructed as not only inevitable but also necessary – and the role of this discourse in the securitization of Indian Country. This dissertation seeks to explore the rhetoric of sacrifice as a throughline in western liberal democracy, specifically in the context of US western expansion and the legal creation of Indian Country. Broadly, it asks the following questions: what is the rhetorical logic of sacrifice and how does it shape the American political imagination? How is this logic made manifest in Indian Country?
AA, Berkeley City College; BA, UC Berkeley