Abstract
Feminist Connections: Rhetoric and Activism across Time, Space, and Place captures current articulations and developments in the feminist movement worldwide. Edited by Katherine Fredlund (Associate Professor of English and director of the first-year writing program at University of Memphis), Kerri Hauman (Associate Professor of writing, rhetoric and composition and co-director of the first-year seminar program at Transylvania University), and Jessica Ouellette (Assistant Professor of English and women and gender studies and director of writing program at the University of Southern Maine), the anthology illuminates rhetorical practices that have gone relatively unnoticed among scholars as feminism has changed across time and media platforms, up to our contemporary digital age. Focusing on the theoretical framework called Rhetorical Transversal Methodology (RTM), the volume’s chapters explain and interrogate gendered power relationships that are both an object of study and a condition of the study of feminism, which remains a widely misunderstood area of study within academic debates and among the public at large. This methodology enables researchers to build connections between historical and digital feminist scholarships by looking at the boundaries of time, content, media, and technology, all while theorizing the evolution of rhetorical practices in the field.
The volume is organized in three main sections, called revisionary rhetorics, circulatory rhetorics, and response rhetorics. In the first section, contributors employ a “re-vision” framework to understand rhetorical practices across different time periods. For example, Swiencicki, Brandt, LeSavoy, and Uman in their chapter titled “Seneca Falls, Strategic Mythmaking, and a Feminist Politics of Relation” discuss the history of women’s suffrage as the prominent beginning of the feminist rhetorical tradition. In her chapter on “Epideictic Rhetoric and Emergent Media: From CAM to BLM,” Tara Popper explains how emergent media construct discourse around racism through the narratives emerging from “the public” on digital platforms. The third chapter, “Recruitment Tropes: Historicizing the Space and Bodies of Women Technical Workers,” by Applegarth, Hallenbeck and Milbourne, offers a critical view of gendered recruitment and reinforcement of hierarchies in technological sectors, in particular telegraphy, stenography, and computer programming. Next, Kellie Jean Sharp (“Take Once Daily: Queer Theory, Biopolitics, and the Rhetoric of Personal Responsibility”) critically questions how queer discourse shapes sexuality and body via pharmacological interventions of contraceptive methods.
Part II, on Circulatory Rhetorics, addresses the delivery and distribution of messages within networks of encounters and interactions within digital spaces. It begins with Kristin Winet’s chapter (“She’s Everywhere, All the Time: How the #Dispatch Interviews Created a Sisterhood of Feminist Travelers”) about the research method of “Interviews” in digital environments about travel discourse. She reiterates that interview has historically been feminist methodology to investigate feminist narratives. The next chapter, “From Victorian Novels to #LikeALadyDoc,” by Kristin E. Kondrlik, unravels the feminist rhetoric of women physicians during the 19th century and in present-day digtial media platforms. In her chapter on “Feminist Rhetorical Strategies and Networked Activist Movements,” she investigates #SayHerName movement as a digital accumulation of historical rhetorical tactics that echo narratives of women of color. Connecting black Twitter digital community and historical rhetoric strategies, Liz Lane explains circulatory tools at length. The last chapter of this section by Lisa Blankenship (“From US Progressive Era Speeches to Transnational Social Media Activism”) emphasizes on the intersectional power differences in feminist rhetoric in different national locales, beginning with labor rights. She examines how rhetorical empathy can invoke necessary change for others’ lived experiences, regardless of their social location.
The last section of this book on Response Rhetorics focuses on ways that the relatively powerless use rhetoric to respond to those with power. It begins with Skye Roberson’s chapter, “Anonymous Was a Woman: Anonymous Authorship as Rhetorical Strategy,” which elaborates how, during Victorian era, feminist rhetoric feminist was published as “first person anonymous,” a format that, ironically, exists in the present digital era, too. The following chapter, “Tracing Conversation: Legitimizing Mormon Feminism,” by Tiffany Kinney, discusses rhetorical responses that challenge patriarchal structure. The section progresses with the chapter on “The Suffragist Movement and the Early Feminist Blogsphere: Feminism and Recent History of Rhetoric” by Clancy Ratlife, which thoughtfully examines gender constraints in the visual images of the early suffragist movement. The penultimate chapter, “Mikki Kendall, Ida B. Wells, and #SolidarityIsForWomen: Women of Color Calling Out White Feminism in The Nineteenth Century and Digital Age,” by Paige V. Banaji, discusses discourses within the feminist movement that have been taking shape through response rhetoric. It critiques how women’s stories have been denied in society, thus illuminating forms oppression that operate within feminism. The section concludes with the chapter by Bethany Mannon on “The Persuasive Power of Individual Stories” that elaborates how personal narrative rhetoric creates new knowledge of cultural narratives.
Although the book discusses some significant historical and contemporary feminist movements from rhetorical perspective, one limitation is that it does not deal all that much with eco-feminism and related rhetorics that are a critical aspect of contemporary feminist discourses. The perspectives from the global South, and especially the South-Asian region, which recently has seen some crucial feminist movements, also seem to be missing in this book. Overall, however, by illuminating rhetorical practices of past and merging them with discussions of contemporary practices, this collection serves as a valuable resource not only for rethinking feminist frameworks but also for charting future directions. The use of RTM in this book enables each chapter to explore myriad connections among time, space, place, and media within the broad and vibrant field of feminist rhetorical studies.