Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
The rhetorical culture war over censorship in Louisiana’s public libraries in 2023 can be traced back to years of political turmoil, COVID fatigue, and the need for a dominant group to maintain power by enforcing staunchly conservative religious values and ideologies in one of America’s most trusted institutions. Through the creation of moral panic and the introduction of pornography in public libraries disguised as literary fiction and non-fiction texts, what started as a matter of parental rights has now transformed into an issue of restricted literature and banned books. As citizen critics, those whom Eberly (2000) described as individuals who gather to discuss literary texts, determine the next steps amidst the democratic debates that have now become the focus of monthly library board of control meetings, a public and counterpublic have emerged. One counterpublic insists that pornography should be removed, while another argues that pornography does not exist among the stacks of books; one group seeks to undermine the legitimacy of another minority group through these persuasive tactics.
The following dissertation outlines a study that examined the censorship culture war occurring within three Louisiana parish libraries: Lafayette Parish, Livingston Parish, and St. Tammany Parish. Through a rhetorical analysis, I uncovered how both the public and counterpublic successfully used rhetorical methods to demonstrate how LGBTQ+-focused social movements in libraries have impacted the LGBTQ+ community by fostering an understanding that libraries serve as informal educational spaces where “a majority of the world’s [readers] who find themselves subjected to various tactics of dehumanization, objectification, and thingification” (Snaza et al. p. xix, 2017) come to learn about and understand themselves.
Date
3-24-2025
Recommended Citation
Doerr, Tiffany S., "Speechless: An Examination of Louisiana's Public Library Censorship Rhetoric" (2025). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6727.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6727
Committee Chair
Bach, Jacqueline