The Body: An Abstract and Actual Rhetorical Concept

Abstract

The body has always been an implicit concern for rhetorical studies. This essay suggests that that implicit concern has mostly relied on an abstract, and specific, concept of the body. It is only through bodily difference in contrast to the unspoken, yet specified, white, cisgender, able-bodied, heterosexual male standard that particular bodies come to matter. The essay ends with a discussion of the body of the black civil rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer, in order to enact a “textual stare” at the field of rhetoric. This stare calls the field to be more attentive to what kinds of rhetorical performance are accepted on their own terms and what kinds deserve scrutiny.

Keywords:

• embodiment
• feminism
• materiality
• power
• textual stare

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Michelle Ballif, Annie Hill, and the reviewers for their support and feedback.

Notes

¹ It should be noted that Campbell and Jamieson’s original development of this concept is highly problematic as the two white women scholars take it upon themselves to make Barbara Jordan’s 1976 Democratic National Convention speech “better” by rewriting it so it used the “enactment” strategy.