Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies

Writing as Feminist Rhetorical Theory

Writing as Feminist Rhetorical Theory Laura R. Micciche What would it mean to read feminists as rhetorical theorists of writing, rather than predominately as social theorists? What can this sort of directed reading teach us about writing and rhetoric? And what can we do with what we learn? These questions lead me to explore a method for engaging with feminist work that emphasizes writing as a conceptual and imaginative process of vital importance to feminist rhetorical theory. In a reciprocal exchange, seeing writing as central to feminist rhetorics promises to expand what writing can mean as a tool for knowledge-making and remaking and for instructional methods. Embedded in feminist rhetorics are theories of writing—or guiding principles explaining what writing is, what it does—for, after all, writing constitutes a core materiality of feminist work. That is, in addition to oratory and social action—both of which entail putting language to work for social change—writing is essential to feminist projects, particularly for those projects that critique oppressive practices and discourses, articulate strategies for change and collective action, identify and describe how rituals of the ordinary are, in actuality, problems, and generally depict the expansive multiplicity of women’s and others’ realities. In the context of rhetorical theory, feminist writing practices have effectively expanded the traditional canon of rhetoric, especially as revisionist accounts of rhetorical history and theory have encouraged ongoing reconsiderations of what counts as rhetoric and invited new possibilities for reading women’s writing as enactments of rhetorical theory. Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald’s anthology Available Means (2001) 173 174 Laura R. Micciche illustrates that the category of women rhetors includes not only philosophers and linguists—those most often associated with producing rhetorical theory—but also fiction writers, poets, anthropologists, and critical theorists, among other diverse practitioners. Indeed, Ritchie and Ronald hope that their choices of inclusion pose the following questions : “What do we have available to us in the body of women’s writing that we might consider as rhetorical theory? What qualities might a work of women’s writing need to possess in order for us to consider it as rhetorical theory? And finally, what blinders are preventing us from reading more of women’s rhetoric as theory?” (xxx). Taking a cue from Ritchie and Ronald, we might read feminist rhetoric as writing theory in action and, by doing so, gather new insights to inform and otherwise invigorate writing pedagogy. A starting point in this effort is to make visible how a number of feminists conceptualize writing as a rhetorical act, in order not to neglect the ideological and political content of feminist rhetorical theory but to position this content as woven into writing practices. From here, we can extract pedagogical methods that capitalize on the fruitful intersections among feminist writing practices and feminist rhetorical theory. Methods, using Sandra Harding’s work as a guide (1987), are techniques or ways of gathering evidence, and methodology, “a theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed” (3). Whereas methods encompass practical ways of doing that can be extracted from feminist rhetorical theory and applied to writing instruction, methodology locates doing in a larger context, explaining the underlying theory that informs it. Feminist methods are inventional sources that create openings for pedagogy; feminist methodologies form the theoretical grounding through which these openings attain explanatory power and politicized significance. To illustrate the sort of openings I have in mind, I turn to Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1990) in order to foreground play as an under-explored yet highly suggestive rhetorical and pedagogical element in feminist writing projects. Play encourages dissonance, reminding us that writing is an imaginative, world-building activity. This claim works against a generalized conception of play as frivolous and extra-rhetorical, in excess of the literacy skills frequently deemed important in expository, analytical, and argument-based writing courses. Such presumptions, as this provisional reading suggests, limit approaches to Writing as Feminist Rhetorical Theory 175 writing and restrict methods of reading feminist rhetorical theory as an inventive site for pedagogy. Haraway’s work, in contrast, reminds us that writing is a technology of power, agency, and, not to be underestimated, irreverence. Writing, understood in this light, requires rhetorical intent, or control and choice-making, and does not shy away from play as a strategic , potentially vigorous function of critical discourse. As Michaela Meyer indicates, intent can consist of playful...