Toward a Posthuman Perspective: Feminist Rhetorical Methodologies and Everyday Practices

Abstract

This article considers the emergence of methodological patterns, or “sanctioned narratives,” within feminist rhetorical historiography, arguing that with just a few exceptions these patterns have anchored our work to conceptions of the woman-as-rhetor exercising deliberate, strategic agency against her world, rather than within it. While this conception has been enormously productive in redefining what “counts” in the history of rhetoric, it also constrains our attempts to pursue broader methodological projects that take as their subject the interworkings of rhetoric, power, and gender. After describing the ways that existing methodological patterns have become entrenched, this article offers one method for shifting our commitments, a feminist-materialist methodology. Influenced by theories of posthuman agency and by actor-network theory, this method can help feminist rhetoricians pursue broader conceptions of rhetoric that will allow us to intervene more effectively in the rhetorical production and transformation of gender relations and power dynamics.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Christa Olson, Peter Mortensen, Debbie Hawhee, Roxanne Mountford, Risa Applegarth, Chelsea Redeker, Erin Branch, and Heather Branstetter for their thoughtful responses to different iterations of this article.

Notes

1. Many clubs developed a tiered membership system involving “full” members (men only) and “social” members, which I later realized involved women.

2. This was remarkable because guidebooks, advertisements, and fashion columns all suggested that wearing a dress was impossible on a standard bicycle—that this was only facilitated by the heavier, less-sturdy, women's drop-framed model. While the dress appeared ungainly, it was useful to see that some practices are not captured in published accounts and that the lived experience of these women often differed from what the “official” records might indicate.

3. The men's and women's “safety” bicycle models differed in ways that were not always immediately visible. Unlike the high-seated men's “Ordinary” bicycles of the previous decade and the women's tricycles, which differed in terms of height, speed, and versatility, the Safeties differed only in relative stability, weight. Women's handlebars were also situated somewhat higher to encourage a more upright posture.

4. After the difficulties that early reformers such as Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Cady Stanton experienced wearing bloomers, many later reformers shied away from actually wearing their reform dress in public.