Rhetoric Society Quarterly Mar 2021

FromLucifertoJezebel: Invitational Rhetoric, Rhetorical Closure, and Safe Spaces in Feminist Sexual Discourse Communities

Wendy Hayden Hunter College

Abstract

This essay applies Craig Rood’s concept of rhetorical closure to the specific case study of the creation of feminist discourse communities to discuss sexuality. It looks at the editorial policies of two feminist discourse communities in order to more broadly analyze the ways that rhetorical closure operates constitutively along with invitational rhetoric. It connects these issues to past and current debates about censorship, echo chambers, safe spaces, and trigger warnings in order to show when and how rhetorical closure is intended to prevent harm. Like Rood, I do not resolve questions on distinguishing the effectiveness or ethics of rhetorical closure. Examining a radical feminist periodical of the nineteenth century and the twenty-first-century feminist blogosphere shows how invitational rhetoric works with and as rhetorical closure.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2021-03-15
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2021.1877797
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Topics
rhetorical criticism discourse analysis feminist rhetorics qualitative research gender and writing
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