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THEORIST TIESRoyster and Kirsch work within the Western rhetorical canon to challenge the very ways in which it operates. They criticize the dominance of focusing on rhetorics of affluent white men and the primary focus on rhetorics of white women within the subfield of feminist rhetorics. Royster and Kirsch call for an attention to global feminisms in order to Reclaim, Recover, and (Re)inscribe stories of women's voices around the world.
They often pull rhetorical connections from men who have worked from the margins in the canon such as Stuart Hall and W.E.B. DuBois, but also take up conversation with some of the women listed below. TECTONIC SHIFTSMalea Powell: Royster and Kirsch turn to Powell for the way in which she describes embodiment as a research strategy in her article "Dreaming Charles Eastman." From her, they learn about sensory experience and scholarly meditation as enabling genres for living with our scholarship. Gail Okawa: Okawa impacts Kirsch and Royster by showing them how to use one's research and scholarship to respond to the culture in which one studies in an ethical, responsible way. They credit Okawa for embodying a scholar-activist whose work contributes to her community.
Patricia Bizzell: Bizzell writes the foreward to FRP, adding her own identity as authority of the rhetorical canon to the project. She says that Royster and Kirsch answer the question: "What makes research in rhetoric 'feminist'?"
Jessica Enoch: Royster and Kirsch believe that Enoch's question that asks how we can recover silenced rhetorics is a needed approach to feminist historiographic practices. Enoch teaches us to trace how women's words have been remembered and retold in different rhetorical situations (p. 104). Krista Ratcliffe: Her work on rhetorical listening provides feminist rhetorical practices with an idea that reading is—and should be—an ethical practice where we pay creative and critical attention to our expectations as we read and research.
Theorist Groundwater
Gayatri Spivak: She is a global feminist who recovers the lost story of her grandmother’s sister, and, in doing, so (re)inscribes rhetorical meaning into the practice of sati. Through this inscription, her work draws attention to the ways in which women's bodies can be used in an attempt to "speak."
Judith Butler: Butler writes about the feminist practice of embodiment, and her work has played a key role in shifting the discussion around gender identity.
Walter Mignolo: He pushes against the Western idea of objectivity that removes knowledge from body and place. His work argues for plural epistemologies and asks scholars to question theoretical frameworks, historical narratives, and the boundaries of academic disciplines. Michael DeCerteau: His theories related to perspective and place, in particular his piece "Walking in the City," speak to embodiment and place-based experience.
Michel Foucault: Foucault in History of Sexuality looks at how silences and discourse around sexuality interact and overlap. This exploration is reminiscent of Royster and Kirsch's social circulation in its recognition of networks that stretch across traditional boundaries, demonstrating the ways power controls which discourse is valued.
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