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Queering Feminist Rhetorical Canonization
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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39 Queering Feminist Rhetorical Canonization K. J. Rawson In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom (1994, 35) describes the canon as “exist[ing] precisely in order to impose limits, to set a standard of measurement that is anything but political or moral.” As Bloom describes it, canonization is an inherently normativizing process—canons exist by virtue of exclusion, selectivity, and standards. Feminists have long opposed canonization since those who have the power to “impose limits” act from a privileged position that is anything but politically neutral. Bloom’s desire, and that of others, to establish a “standard of measurement” that is politically or morally neutral fails to account for the complexities of canon formation. Disciplines tend to create canons over time, cumulatively, through scholarly publications, anthologies, and courses. Through these channels, canons develop when some texts emerge as seminal, as do the methodologies that scholars use to engage these texts. Feminist rhetoric has now reached a point where we have a discernable canon—a group of texts, including feminist rhetors and feminist scholarship, that we engage with regularly. My goal here is not to argue for the texts and methodologies that constitute the feminist rhetorical canon; rather, it is to investigate methodological patterns in the feminist rhetorical canon that shape our field. While the existence of the feminist rhetorical canon signals feminist rhetoric’s secure presence in rhetoric and composition, it also functions to establish methodological 40 K. J. Rawson norms that determine what constitutes feminist rhetoric, and perhaps more importantly, what does not. The feminist rhetorical canon has been guided by two primary methodologies . One is feminist rhetorical recovery of previously ignored or unknown women rhetors. The other is theorizing of women’s rhetorics, or what some have called “gendered analysis,” which involves developing a rhetorical concept or approach that accounts for rhetors who are excluded from traditional rhetoric. In “Sappho’s Memory,” Susan C. Jarratt (2002, 11) similarly identifies two methodological approaches to feminist rhetoric, though her argument is specific to feminist rhetorical historiography. She calls these two approaches “recovery of female rhetors and gendered analysis of both traditional and newly rediscovered sources.” I understand these two methodologies in terms of movement. For feminist rhetorical recovery scholarship, the movement is often from individual figures or particular groups to theorizing about the contribution of those figures or groups (see, for example, Logan 1999). This work often begins with a single individual (e.g., Anna Julia Cooper) or a specific category of individuals (e.g., nineteenth-century black women rhetors) to then create broader theories about how women use rhetoric. Feminist rhetorical theory, on the other hand, moves from broader rhetorical theorizing to focus on individuals by engaging a single, though complex, topic or conceptual category (e.g., delivery) and applying it to specific examples of rhetorical practices (see, for example, Buchanan 2005.). While these two approaches—recovery and gendered analysis—have been extraordinarily productive and have essentially created and established a field of rhetorical study where there wasn’t one before, both have relied upon normative notions of gender to identify and categorize what counts as feminist rhetoric. Feminist rhetorical recovery work has thus far used fixed identity categories, typically “woman” or “female,” and has mostly recovered a gender-normative body of texts—those produced by biologically born, self-identified, or historically identified women. What Jarratt (2002) calls “gendered analysis” has similarly normativized the feminist rhetorical canon; while it has engaged with oppressive gender roles and stereotypes (i.e., male and female), it has not yet challenged gender binaries and logics (i.e., masculinity and femininity). [54.157.56.179] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:32 GMT) Queering Feminist Rhetorical Canonization 41 How is “woman” defined in feminist rhetorics? Is our definition hinged on a simple biological, anatomical, or chromosomal basis? If so, we might do well to keep in mind the disabilities studies concept of normate , which in this context, might shed critical light on the privileging of people whose birth-assigned, anatomical, biological, social, and psychological genders are all neatly and unquestioningly aligned. Since I have never encountered a definition or extrapolation of “woman” in feminist rhetoric, does that imply that feminist rhetoric reifies the idea that there’s no need to define “woman,” that women simply are? If that is the case, I would suggest that we might benefit from engaging with historical and political projects that define and locate “woman” as a complex identity production and performance.1 With such careful contextualization and critical location...