Figuring feminist histories of rhetoric

While feminist revisionary historiography in rhetorical studies is often identified by its efforts to recover neglected women rhetors for the rhetorical canon, the feminist revisionary histories and historiographies of rhetoric produced during the last three decades also, and more importantly, constitute a powerful critical apparatus that has radically shifted epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical standards for historical research in the discipline. Recently, however, scholars have complained that the critical potential of feminist revisionary scholarship is being curtailed as feminist historians increasingly prioritize representation and preservation over disciplinary critique. In response to this contemporary situation, I argue that it is necessary to trace the shifting role of representation in feminist revisionary historiography during the last three decades. This dissertation tracks the role of representation in feminist histories of rhetoric through four groundbreaking methodological metaphors, each of which functions both to critically revise the epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical conditions for feminist historical research, and to institute new constraints on feminist historical discourse. The first chapter, “Voices of the Past,” describes the emergence of feminist the feminist revisionary intervention and, by offering historical context to the inaugural feminist methodological metaphors of “speaking for” and “listening,” argues that the feminist commitment to representation as a mode of critique is no longer sufficient to articulate existing disciplinary presuppositions and constraints. The second chapter, “Disorienting Orientations on the Map of Rhetoric,” tracks the methodological shift from the recovery of marginalized women rhetors toward the revision and “remapping” of dominant disciplinary narratives, and shows how the spatial logic of orientation constrains contemporary feminist historical production. The third chapter, “Welcome to the House of Rhetoric,” focuses on architectural metaphors and suggests that contemporary feminist historians ought to rethink the dynamics of power and historical access outside of normative vertical and spatial metaphors, and especially within pedagogical spaces. The text concludes with “Haunting Feminist Historical Methodologies,” where I argue that the metaphor of haunting provides contemporary feminist historians with the necessary epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical resources to both revive the critical potential of revisionary methodologies and to imagine ethical feminist histories that would refuse the constative and performative representational imperativeEnglis