Feminist Rhetorical Resilience

Reflection

R e F l e c t i o n Eileen Schell Understanding the mutidimensional rhetoric of Vandana Shiva requires rhetorical stretching and imagining. Shiva’s rhetorical influences and geopolitical identifications are multiple and intersecting. Shiva is a transnational figure who addresses audiences in print books and environmental treatises, in person through speeches, and on the Internet. Yet she is also firmly rooted in Indian culture and society even as she travels the globe organizing protests, attending meetings, and delivering lectures. In my chapter, I attempt to understand Shiva’s rhetorical strategies across the multidisciplinary areas of her work in ecofeminisms, agricultural discourses, and global trade policies. These have not been the traditional domains of humanists, or of many rhetoricians, for that matter. Even grasping some of her arguments about biodiversity and agriculture may prove to be a challenge to traditionally trained humanists and rhetoricians who may not be knowledgeable about agricultural or agrarian rhetorics or global trade policies. To undertake the rhetorical work of analyzing Shiva and her social movement work is to struggle mightily in a sea of unfamiliar discourses, even for someone who has an agricultural and family farming background, as I do. In this piece, I have been primarily concerned about, as Lyon and Őzel put it, “demonstrating the importance of multiple rhetorical traditions in linking small farmers in South Asia with concerned citizens in the global North” and in examining how “transnational feminist rhetoric(s) might work as a counter system of knowledge and power” (56). I have been interested, as Lyon and Őzel observe, in offering up “a case of resilience in the face of monocultural capitalist patriarchy” (56). I also have been interested in expanding our feminist canon of rhetorical figures to account for transnational feminist figures and movements on the global stage—an area of research that is growing, but is still in the earlier phases of development As Lyon and Őzel point out, my analysis tends to favor the Western side of Shiva’s rhetorical strategies. They argue that my chapter does 58 FEM I N I ST RH ETORI CA L RESI LI EN C E not acknowledge the influence of “the rhetorical traditions of the great Hindu epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana,” and it does not locate Shiva’s work in relation to work of Indian scholars such as “Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen or Indian social historian Romila Thapar” (58). They offer an effective critique of the limits of the rhetorical resources and analytics upon which I have drawn. At the same time, my analysis makes use of terms that Shiva herself sets forth in her published work in very direct and explicit ways—terms from ecofeminism, a discourse and theory she helped solidify in collaboration with Maria Mies; terms drawn from Gandhi’s rhetoric and philosophy, which she acknowledges as foundational to her environmental advocacy; and terms from global agrarian social movements and alternative globalization movements located in India and other countries, including her organization of women scientists, Diverse Women for Diversity. Thus, Shiva’s work speaks to multiple publics on agrarian issues, marshaling resources from a variety of discourses and locations. As Lyon and Őzel indicate, “transnational movements place the activists and industrialists of many nations in struggle and dialogue, creating a polyphony of traditions , rhetorics, and cultures” (58). I have sought out Shiva as a figure of rhetorical resilience, as a solidarity figure who builds local and global coalitions to achieve environmental policy changes and raise awareness about how globalization looks and feels from the Two-Thirds World. As the editors of the introduction to this volume indicate, Shiva is a figure who works toward “collective agency in feminist activism” (13); she builds solidarity and interconnections among various stakeholders as she works to preserve biodiversity and keep indigenous farmers on their lands. ...