'rhetoric of conversion' / 'transformation'

'There are obvious lessons to be learned in regard to [the rhetoric of transformation] from religious history and theory in terms of the rhetoric of conversion, which was not infrequently coupled with physical and psychological force, torture, systematic persecution, killing, or some combination of these, including genocide.

Here, however, [this project is] employing the idea more in the sense of William James (1902/1929) of an individual experience [or personal affective transformation], even when there are also social consequences.'

-DD, p. 23