Rhetoric and Social Theory

Catholicism, Contraception, and Conscience: Church Imposed Teaching, God’s Gift of Free Will, and Political Rhetoric by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

ertainly one cannot turn on the news without seeing a story about the feud over the Catholic Church’s stance on... more ertainly one cannot turn on the news without seeing a story about the feud over the Catholic Church’s stance on forbidding the use of contraception and Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that mandates free contraception to women.  In preparing this article, I took the time to review many articles from liberal and conservative news outlets, law professors who are experts on constitutional law, and statements from the USCCB and Bishops.  Before asking questions, I want to outline the following points:

    *In the literature reviewed, only two women, Sr. Carol Keehan and Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, made a statement against this policy stating that the government is interfering with the working of the Church.  Most voices heard and shouting the loudest are members of the clergy.

    *Hospitals considered “Catholic” hire people of all faiths and various beliefs.  They also treat patients of all faiths.  They are not exclusively “Catholic.”

    *Catholic identified Colleges hire professors and staff that are not Catholic.  Moreover, their student body is not totally Catholic.

    *Catholic Charities, once again, hire non-Catholics.

  * Insurance plans currently in place often offer contraception prescriptions at a zero to low co-pay price.  These plans are in-force at many Catholic Institutions.

    *Under HIPAA, healthcare of employees are protected and the Employer, even the Catholic Church cannot violate the privacy of the patient, even if it is an employee.

    *Birth Control Pills are often prescribed for women with endometriosis or other “female” reproductive disorders and not birth control.

    Women pregnant, carrying a dead baby, cannot have surgery due to risks are given medication to induce abortion are given

Does Humor Have a Place in Religion? by Barbara Ardinger

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project.

Is there anything funny about the divine? Any joke-telling gods? From the days of Abraham until today, the gods and... more Is there anything funny about the divine? Any joke-telling gods? From the days of Abraham until today, the gods and their preachers are a very earnest lot intent on saving us from our sins and building congregations.

Like it or not, we neopagans are still children of the society we’re endeavoring to change. Some of us seem to want to switch patriarchy to matriarchy, but that’s just swapping Big Daddy for Big Momma. It’s still a hierarchical arrangement with the deity at the top of the mountain. Immediately below the “arch” are angels, men, eagles, lions, and other superior beasts. At the bottom of the mountain are women, mud, and matter. (In case you don’t recognize it, this is the 18th-century Great Chain of Being.)

Any humor in spiritual and religious writing? The Hebrew Bible (which Christians refer to as the Old Testament) is a collection of laws, canonically approved versions of history, prophetical preachings, and poetry. The Christian Bible (aka New Testament) give us different approved versions of history, plus further preaching, plus myth and mysticism.

Plain Speaking : Judging an Oratory Contest

by Thorold (Thor) May

Although first published in 1989, this paper retains relevance, especially for the "speech competitions" which are run (usually poorly) in countries where English is taught as a second language.

Abstract: This paper attempts to explain the criteria which judges are likely to apply in the Fiji National Oratory... more Abstract: This paper attempts to explain the criteria which judges are likely to apply in the Fiji National Oratory Contest. It comments upon some features of the 1989 contest, and suggests factors which may have underlain the performance of contestants. However, the analysis is not merely local to an historical time or place. Oratory contests are a special case of the “speaking competitions” which are widespread in countries where English is learned as a second language. The cultural beliefs and traditions which come into play in public speaking are especially important in cross-cultural situations. The solutions discussed here have universal relevance for speakers and judges.

Pour Protagoras: Angenot et le sens du social. Dialogues de sourds. Traité de rhétorique antilogique de Marc Angenot. Mille et une nuits, 450 p. Dialogues de sourds. …

by Yan Hamel

“Politics, Speech, and the Art of Persuasion: Towards an Aristotelian Conception of the Public Sphere. “ The Journal of Politics VOL. 63, No. 3 (1999): pp. 741-757.

by Phil Triadafilopoulos

Greene(2012). Lessons from the YMCA: The material rhetoric of criticism, rhetorical interpretation and pastoral power

by Ron Greene

published in Communication M@tters: Materialist approaches to media, mobility, and networks. Eds., Jeremy Packer and Stephen B. Crofts Wiley (pp. 219-230). NY: Routledge, 2012.

Rethinking Immaterial Labor: Communication, Reality, and Neo-Radicalism

by Jason Del Gandio

Published in Radical Philosophy Review Volume 14 number 2 (2011) 121–138

Working from the post-Workerist tradition, this
essay re-specifies the phenomenon of immaterial labor.more Working from the post-Workerist tradition, this
essay re-specifies the phenomenon of immaterial labor.
Immaterial labor is not simply a mode of work relevant to the
information-based global economy. Instead, immaterial labor
is inherent to the human condition: human beings materialize
realities through the immaterial means of communication.
This ontological approach to immaterial labor enables us to
rethink the radical project: rather than trying to “change the
world,” we are now called to create alternative realities that
resist the subjugation of our immaterial laboring. Since we are
all immaterial laborers, we all have a stake in revolutionizing
our realities. This essay provides a preliminary sketch of this
political philosophy.

Rhetoric As a Way of Being

by Thomas Benson

" You Just Don't See Enough Normal": Critical Perspectives on Infant-Feeding Discourse and Practice

by Amy Koerber

Published in Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2005, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 304-327

Building on Herndl’s concept of critical practice, this article presents a case study of attempts to change the... more Building on Herndl’s concept of critical practice, this article presents a case study of attempts to change the discourse practices surrounding breast-feeding in today’s medical environment. To complicate readers’ understanding of rhetorical agency, resistance, and discursive change, the author considers the rhetorical efforts of two high-profile physicians alongside those of the nonphysician breast-feeding advocates she interviewed. Ultimately, this dual perspective shows that discursive efforts to change medical practices can fail, even when supported by powerful figures within the medical establishment, if the new ideas communicated in such efforts conflict with long-established material conditions.

Postmodernism, Resistance, and Cyberspace: Making Rhetorical Spaces for Feminist Mothers on the Web

by Amy Koerber

Published in Women's Studies in Communication, Fall 2001, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 218-240

This article argues that online communities can be seen as fostering meaningful political action, but that to... more This article argues that online communities can be seen as fostering meaningful political action, but that to understand such action requires rethinking the notion of political resistance in postmodern terms. Its claims are based on rhetorical analysis of the political activity occurring in an online community being fostered by a cluster of websites on feminist mothering and alternative parenting.

" You Just Don't See Enough Normal": Critical Perspectives on Infant-Feeding Discourse and Practice

by Amy Koerber

Published in Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2005, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 304-327

Building on Herndl’s concept of critical practice, this article presents a case study of attempts to change the... more Building on Herndl’s concept of critical practice, this article presents a case study of attempts to change the discourse practices surrounding breast-feeding in today’s medical environment. To complicate readers’ understanding of rhetorical agency, resistance, and discursive change, the author considers the rhetorical efforts of two high-profile physicians alongside those of the nonphysician breast-feeding advocates she interviewed. Ultimately, this dual perspective shows that discursive efforts to change medical practices can fail, even when supported by powerful figures within the medical establishment, if the new ideas communicated in such efforts conflict with long-established material conditions.

Rhetorical Agency, Resistance, and the Disciplinary Rhetorics of Breastfeeding

by Amy Koerber

Published in Technical Communication Quarterly, Volume 15, Issue 1 January 2006 , pp. 87 - 101

Drawing on interviews from a qualitative study, this article extends theorizing about rhetorical agency and resistance... more Drawing on interviews from a qualitative study, this article extends theorizing about rhetorical agency and resistance by analyzing how breastfeeding advocates and their clients resist medical regulatory rhetoric. The resistant acts that interviewees describe begin with a negotiation of discursive alternatives and subject positions framed by the grid of disciplinary rhetoric about breastfeeding. But in some acts of resistance, breastfeeding women use both discursive and bodily actions to disrupt the intelligibility of this grid and what it deems possible. When such disruption occurs, the results are unpredictable and so must be understood as more than the occupation of preexisting subject positions.

Communication design and theories of learning

by Brad Mehlenbacher

Mehlenbacher, B. (2008). Communication design and theories of learning. SIGDOC’08: The 26th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication Proceedings. Lisbon, Portugal: ACM, 139-146.

This paper provides a brief overview of the ill-structured information spaces that communication designers create and... more This paper provides a brief overview of the ill-structured information spaces that communication designers create and inhabit, highlighting the need for a research-based understanding of learning. A sociocognitive approach to learning that benefits from the strengths of cognitive and social perspectives is described. As a complex learning activity, communication design and use demand creative, multidisciplinary approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

A Gay-Themed Young Adult Novel as Alternative Rhetoric

by Karen Whitley

This literature review is part of a larger research project for ENGL 5363: Research Methods in TC and Composition. I am taking my second doctoral course. Even though I am a gay person, I knew very little about queer theory going into this project. Additionally, I am brand new to the field of TCR. My biggest challenges were trying to read, understand, and synthesize Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, and David L. Wallace's new book Compelled to Write: Alternative Rhetoric in Theory and Practice. After developing a working understanding of those texts, I then had to situate what I wanted to do, which was perform a rhetorical analysis on a gay-themed, young adult diary-novel called Miguel's Secret Journal by A.V. Zeppa, within the field of composition and rhetoric.

In this literature review, I will define the larger cultural problem using my own knowledge and experience as a gay... more In this literature review, I will define the larger cultural problem using my own knowledge and experience as a gay person, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet, and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. Understanding the larger cultural problem is critical because it is the real-life backdrop against which I pose all of my questions. Next, I will explain how a gay-themed, young adult diary-novel is a rhetorical act and how analyzing that text is also a rhetorical act by providing a broad definition of rhetoric as well as a recently proposed definition of alternative rhetoric by David L. Wallace in Compelled to Write: Alternative Rhetoric in Theory and Practice. I intend to conclude with a discussion about what questions are important for a rhetor to ask when analyzing a gay-themed, young adult diary-novel, and which frameworks might best serve the rhetor in exploring answers to those questions.

Corruption and Empire: Notes on Wisconsin

by Ron Greene

No Time For Mourning: The Rhetorical Production of the Melancholic Citizen-Subject in the War on Terror

by Barbara Biesecker

Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from within the Thematic of'Différance'

by Barbara Biesecker

On the Rhetoric of Second Amendment Remedies

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “On the Rhetoric of Second Amendment Remedies.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 1, no. 1 (2011): 31-39.

The current political landscape seems rife with partisanship and toxic rhetoric. Although this is certainly nothing... more The current political landscape seems rife with partisanship and toxic rhetoric. Although this is certainly nothing new, there has been an increase in rhetoric that suggests that citizens take up arms against the government. In the wake of the shooting at a political rally held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the media began asking whether violent rhetoric could lead to violent acts and politicians began to call for greater civility in political discourse. This essay examines the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle to explore the rhetorical implications of a worldview that deeply distrusts the government and considers armed insurrection as an appropriate corrective to a government run amok

Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians? On Relevance and Timeliness in Rhetorical Scholarship

by Brett Lunceford

Lunceford, Brett. “Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians? On Relevance and Timeliness in Rhetorical Scholarship.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 1, no. 1 (2011): 1-9.

Rhetorical scholarship, if it is to remain relevant, must be actively applied to current events. This essay proposes... more Rhetorical scholarship, if it is to remain relevant, must be actively applied to current events. This essay proposes an alternate mode of scholarship, one that takes advantage of the online medium and integrates the speed of journalism with the rigors of scholarly analysis. Such a mode of scholarship dissemination is not meant to replace the current journal system; rather it serves a different end—that of providing scholarship to the public as a whole. I argue that scholarly analysis of current events will enrich the dialogue that is already taking place in the public sphere and help citizens to more fully take part in democratic practice.

The rhetoric of ethnographic holism

by Robert Thornton

This paper is one that should have been included in Writing Culture: The poetics and politics of ethnographic writing (James Clifford and George Marcus, eds., University of California Press 1986). The book was the “product of intensive discussions held at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico during April 1984” (vii). The idea for this seminar grew out of an earlier attempt of mine to convene such a seminar in Cape Town, in 1983. Unfortunately, I was not able to raise the funding, and American participants were reluctant to travel to South Africa at the time, in part because of cultural sanctions against Apartheid and the South African government. The idea was taken up by James Clifford, however, who took the idea forward, largely without credit to me. The book was published quickly after that, and I was too heavily burdened with teaching to finish my contribution in time. The article was published in the third volume of the journal that had been founded by George Marcus in 1984, and then again in a summary volume of articles from that journal, and has been translated into German.

1988. The rhetoric of ethnographic holism. Cultural Anthropology 3(3).

Also in

1993. Die Rhetorik des ethnographischen Holismus. In Kultur, soziale Praxis, Text: die Krise der ethnogra-phischen Repräsentation. Edited by Eberhard Berg and Martin Fuchs. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp-Tassenbuch Verlag.

1992. Reprint of "The rhetoric of ethnographic holism" in the Anthology Rereading Cultural Anthropology, ed-ited by George Marcus. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

The fundamental and motivating problem of ethnography is how to use writing to bring the "everyday" into... more The fundamental and motivating problem of ethnography is how to use writing to bring the "everyday" into relation with "history" and "environment." Since writing is a work of the imagination, it is in the imagination that the crucial synthesis between the microcosm and the macrocosm takes place. Unlike the zoologist who describes the mollusc before him, the ethnographer must imagine the "whole" that is society, and convey this imagination of wholeness to his reader along with the descriptions of places seen, speech heard, persons met. The description of wholes, however, is "description without place ... a sight indifferent to the eye." For this, the ethnography needs a special kind of rhetorical technique. Both the rhetoric and the imagination essential to it are founded on classification employed as rhetorical figure. The ethnography's use of classification constitutes a use of language outside of its normal syntactic and semantic sense that point to or suggest other levels of meaning-that is, it functions as a trope that I shall call the rhetoric of classification. I argue that the imagination of wholes is a rhetorical imperative for ethnography since it is this image of wholeness that gives the ethnography a sense of fulfilling "closure" that other genres accomplish by different rhetorical means. The rhetoric of classification is the means whereby this closure is achieved, since it structures the descriptions of "items" that derive ultimately from the experience of research in the field.