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ABSTRACT
Serious considerations of intersectionality are critical to the future and viability of feminist rhetorical scholarship and scholars have made impressive methodological shifts in response to this exigency. However, though feminist rhetorical scholarship has painted a rich picture of how intersectionality operates at the level of the critic, I suggest that there needs to be more critical investigation of how intersectionality functions at the level of discourse—how it is constituted by and through rhetoric. To this end, I develop a theory of intersectional rhetoric, which I argue emerges at the point where intersectionality as an analytic sensibility and embodied rhetorical praxis converge. I theorize the ways in which intersectional rhetoric manifests junctures between (1) theory and experience, (2) discourse and materiality, and (3) academic and activist intellectual spheres to develop more nuanced political arguments about structural oppression on multiple axes. I use the work of body positive activist Ashleigh Shackelford as a case study for examining how, through what techniques, and to what end rhetors craft these links in performances of intersectional rhetoric. I conclude by discussing the implications a theory of intersectional rhetoric has for rhetorical theory, rhetorical critics, and intersectional feminist activism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Mary Stuckey and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and direction throughout the revision process. I would also like to thank Dr. Katie Gibson for the continued guidance and support she provided while preparing this manuscript. Finally, I am grateful to Dr. Tom Dunn, Jordin Clark, Emily Krebs, Kristin Slattery, and Hayley Blackburn for their helpful feedback at various stages of this project.
Notes
1 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1989): 139–68.
2 Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 4 (2013): 795.
3 Carrie Crenshaw, “Women in the Gulf War: Toward an Intersectional Feminist Rhetorical Cristicism,” Howard Journal of Communications 8, no. 3 (1997): 220.
4 Lisa A. Flores, “Creating Discursive Space through a Rhetoric of Difference: Chicana Feminists Craft a Homeland,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82, no. 2 (1996): 142–56; Dana L. Cloud, “Hegemony or Concordance? The Rhetoric of Tokenism in ‘Oprah’ Oprah Rags-to-riches Biography,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13, no. 2 (1996): 115–37; Dreama Moon and Lisa A. Flores, “Antiracism and the Abolition of Whiteness: Rhetorical Strategies of Domination among ‘Race Traitors’,” Communication Studies 51, no. 2 (2000): 97–115; Marouf Hasian and Fernando Delgado, “The Trials and Tribulations of Racialized Critical Rhetorical Theory: Understanding the Rhetorical Ambiguities of Proposition 187,” Communication Theory 8, no. 3 (1998): 245–70.
5 See Cindy L. Griffin and Karma R. Chávez, “Introduction: Standing at the Intersectional of Feminism, Intersectionality, and Communication Studies,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 3.
6 Bernadette Marie Calafell, “The Future of Feminist Scholarship: Beyond the Politics of Inclusion,” Women’s Studies in Communication 37, no. 3 (September 2, 2014): 266.
7 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies,” 795.
8 See Lester C. Olson, “Intersecting Audiences: Public Commentary Concerning Audre Lorde's Speech, ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic of Power’,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 125–46; Sara L. McKinnon, “Essentialism, Intersectionality and Recognition: A Feminist Rhetorical Approach to the Audience,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 189–210; Jennifer Keohane, “Spheres of Influence: The Intersections of Feminism and Transnationalism in Betty Millard's Woman Against the Myth,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 189–210; Leslie A. Hahner, “Constituitive Intersectionality and the Affect of Rhetorical Form,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 147–68.
9 Davis, “A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic,”84.
10 See Davis, “A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic,” 77–90; Lester C. Olson, “Intersecting Audiences,” 125–46; Leslie A. Hahner, “Constituitive Intersectionality and the Affect of Rhetorical Form,” 147–68; Sara L. MacKinnon, “Essentialism, Intersectionality, and Recognition,” 189–210.
11 Flores, “Creating Discursive Space through a Rhetoric of Difference,” 143.
12 de Onís, “Lost in Translation,” 1–19.
13 Patricia Hill Collins, “Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemmas,” Annual Review of Sociology 41, no. 1 (2015): 2.
14 Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), 65.
15 Julia T. Wood, “Gender and Moral Voice: Moving from Woman's Nature to Standpoint Epistemology,” Women's Studies in Communication 15, no. 1 (1992): 1–24.
16 Dorothy E. Smith, “Comment on Hekman's ‘Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited’,” Signs 22, no. 2 (1997): 393.
17 Rita Felski, “The Invention of Everyday Life,” New Formations 39 (1999): 30.
18 See Elizabeth A. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2012); Gloria Dall’Alba and Robyn Barnacle, “Embodied Knowing in Online Environments,” Educational Philosophy & Theory 37, no. 5 (October 2005): 719–44.
19 Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 26, no. 1 (1999): 10.
20 For DeLuca's theory of “body rhetoric,” see Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 26, no. 1 (1999).
21 Carly S. Woods, “(Im)Mobile Metaphors: Toward an Intersectional Rhetorical History,” in Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies, ed. Karma R. Chávez and Cindy L. Griffin (Albany, NY: Suny Press, 2012), 82.
22 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 18; Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” 1977.
23 Flores, “Creating Discursive Space through a Rhetoric of Difference,” 143–44.
24 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 33.
25 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1299.
26 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 43; Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies,” 800.
27 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 43.
28 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies,” 800.
29 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 33.
30 Donyae Coles, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes from and Erases Fat Black Women,” Wear Your Voice, October 5, 2018, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/body-politics/body-positivity-movement-takes-erases-fat-black-women; Sherronda J. Brown, “How Mainstream Body Positivity Has Failed Us,” Wear Your Voice, February 1, 2019, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/body-politics/bopoincolor/intro-bopoincolor.
31 Donyae Coles, “Six Queer BIPOC Voices in the Body Positive Movement,” Wear Your Voice, May 23, 2018, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/body-politics/six-queer-bipoc-voices-body-positive-movement; Stephanie Yeboah, “Why are Women of Colour Left Out of Body Positivity?,” ELLE, September 15, 2017, http://www.elleuk.com/fashion/longform/a38300/women-of-colour-left-out-of-body-positivity/.
32 See the following blog post for one popular fat activist's compelling reasoning for disavowing body positivity: Your Fat Friend, “A Draft Agenda for Fat Justice,” Medium (blog), July 9, 2018, https://medium.com/@thefatshadow/a-draft-agenda-for-fat-justice-db878d93cd98.
33 Ashleigh Shackelford, “About Ashleigh,” Accessed April 21, 2019, http://ashleighshackelford.com/about-ashleigh/.
34 Shackelford, “About Ashleigh.”
35 Shackelford, “About Ashleigh.”
36 Woods, “(Im)Mobile Metaphors: Toward an Intersectional Rhetorical History,” 79.
37 bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 149.
38 Ashleigh Shackelford, “Bittersweet Like Me: Lemonade and Fat Black Femme Erasure,” Wear Your Voice, April 27, 2016, http://wearyourvoicemag.com/more/entertainment/bittersweet-like-lemonade-aint-made-fat-black-women-femmes.
39 Ashleigh Shackelford, “Black Girl Interrupted: My Body, the World, and Nonbinary Me,” Wear Your Voice, November 18, 2016, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/black-girl-interrupted-nonbinary.
40 Ashleigh Shackelford, “Queer Like Me: Breaking the Chains of Femme Invisibility,” Wear Your Voice, November 22, 2016, Accessed December 2, 2017, http://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/queer-breaking-chains-femme; Ashleigh Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me: Reparations for Fat Black Bitches and Everything We Provide,” Wear Your Voice, May 25, 2016, Accessed December 2, 2017, http://wearyourvoicemag.com/body-politics/fuck-pay-reparations-fat-black-bitches-everything-provide.
41 Nedra Reynolds, “Ethos as Location: New Sites for Understanding Discursive Authority,” Rhetoric Review 11, no. 2 (1993): 332.
42 Reynolds, “Ethos as Location,” 332.
43 hooks, Yearning, 146.
44 Shackelford, “Black Girl Interrupted.”
45 Shackelford, “Black Girl Interrupted.”
46 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Kimberlé Crenshaw: WOW 2016 Keynote” (Women of the World Festival, London, England, March 12, 2016), http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/kimberl%C3%A9-crenshaw-wow-2016-keynote.
47 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
48 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
49 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
50 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
51 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
52 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
53 Robert E. Belknap, The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 7; Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (Menston: Scolar Press, 1577), 7–8.
54 Belknap, The List, 31.
55 Belknap, The List, 30.
56 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
57 Shackelford, “Bittersweet Like Me.”
58 Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore Book III. De Fato, Paradoxa Stoicorum, Partitiones Oratoriae, trans. H Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 15.53.
59 Shackelford, “Queer Like Me.”
60 Shackelford, “Bittersweet Like Me.”
61 Ashleigh Shackelford, “Khloe Kardashian's ‘Revenge Body’ Show Is Fatphobia Disguised as Empowerment,” Wear Your Voice, November 16, 2016, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/more/entertainment/khloe-kardashian-revenge-body.
62 Shackelford, “Fuck You, Pay Me.”
63 Ashleigh Shackelford, “About Ashleigh,” Accessed August 6, 2018, http://ashleighshackelford.com/about-ashleigh/; Ashleigh Shackelford, “Speaking Events & Workshops,” Accessed August 6, 2018, http://ashleighshackelford.com/speaking-events-workshops/.
64 “About Ashleigh.”
65 Hood Femme and Ashleigh Shackelford, “About Ashleigh,” Accessed November 18, 2016, http://www.blackfatfemme.com/about-ashleigh/.
66 See Jan H. Samoriski, “Private Spaces and Public Interests: Internet Navigation, Commercialism and the Fleecing of Democracy,” Communication Law and Policy 5, no. 1 (2000): 93–113; John Michael Roberts, “Social Media and the Neoliberal Subject,” in New Media and Public Activism: Neoliberalism, the State and Radical Protest in the Public Sphere (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2014), 93–112; James C. Witte and Susan E. Mannon, The Internet and Social Inequalities (New York: Routledge, 2010).
67 Adrienne Shaw, “The Internet Is Full of Jerks, Because the World Is Full of Jerks: What Feminist Theory Teaches Us About the Internet,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 11, no. 3 (2014): 276.
68 Shaw, “The Internet is Full of Jerks,” 276.
69 Liz Lane, “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology no. 8 (2015).
70 Fredrika Thelandersson, “A Less Toxic Feminism: Can the Internet Solve the Age Old Question of How to Put Intersectional Theory into Practice?” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 3 (2014): 529.
71 Thelandersson, “A Less Toxic Feminism,” 527–30.
72 “About Us,” Wear Your Voice, Accessed April 21, 2019, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/about-us.
73 Mia Lövheim, “Young Women's Blogs as Ethical Spaces,” Information, Communication & Society 14, no. 3 (11): 314; Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz, “Why We Blog,” Communications of the ACM 47, no. 12 (2004): 41–46.
74 Hill Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 43.
75 Ashleigh Shackelford, “#BodyPositiveWeek: Body Positivity Doesn't Exist Without Black Lives Matter,” Wear Your Voice, August 14, 2016, http://wearyourvoicemag.com/body-politics/body-positivity-black-lives-matter.
76 Shackelford, “#BodyPositiveWeek.”
77 Shackelford, “#BodyPositiveWeek.”
78 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies,” 795.
79 Dow, “Authority, Invention, and Context in Feminist Rhetorical Criticism,” 66.
80 Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies,” 795.
81 Ashleigh Shackelford, “The Body Positivity Movement Looks A Lot Like White Feminism: On Tess Holliday & Accountability,” BuzzFeed Community, December 17, 2015, http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleighshackelford/the-body-positivity-movement-looks-a-lot-like-whit-1wcqy.