Comparatively speaking: gender and rhetoric: introduction

• Published in: Intertexts (Lubbock, Tex.) Tex.), 2014-03, Vol.18 (1), p.1
• Main Authors: Plate, Liedeke, Zoberman, Pierre
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Femininity; Gender identity; Glenn, Cheryl; Masculinity; Rhetoric
• ISSN: 1092-0625; 2156-5465

[...]in seventeenth-century France, at the very moment when a feminized cultural public sphere developed, preliminary texts in books written by women foregrounded a modesty and a strategy of disclaimer that were instrumental in effacing those works from the canon. Glo- balization has been put on the agenda of rhetorical studies for a while now, for instance by Eileen Schell in her contribution to Kate Ronald and Joy Ritchie's Teaching Rhetori- ca (2006), "Gender, Rhetorics, and Globalization," in which she argues for the need to engage feminist rhetorics in transnational contexts, stating that "understanding rhe- torical location in a globalized world means understanding flows of capital and people across national borders" (168). [...]by addressing gender and rhetoric comparatively, this volume engages questions of contemporary relevance as well as the kind of ques- tions comparatists today are interested in-witness, for instance, the debate that took place in 2011 in the pages of Rhetoric Society Quarterly on "doing comparative rhetoric responsibly" in a global context, and in which LuMing Mao argued for the develop- ment of "approaches that treat non-Western rhetorics on their own terms" and the recognition that "doing comparative rhetorical work will always be a process and that whatever description provided embodies a point of view" (65-6).3 While the whole project can be linked to this type of concern, it is most explicitly taken up in Lisa Cor- rigan's essay, as she compares the rhetorics of poster art in Cuba and the United States and explores Chicano/a appropriations and revisions of 1960s Cuban poster art. Whereas much work has already been done on women and/in rhetoric, especially in the United States and Canada, the gender approach, both in its binary (masculinity/femininity) aspect, and in the queer subversion of the binary, has been less developed. [...]the volume explores both how genders are rhetorically constructed in various cultural contexts, and how gender is part of the factors in the development of rhetorical theory as well as specific rhetorical strategies. [...]Christine Neejer's "A Conser- vative Road: The Bicycling Rhetoric of Mary Sargent Hopkins" focuses on the writings of bicycling journalist and champion of women's health Mary Sargent Hopkins in light of historical discussions about New Womanhood.