The Queer Kairotic: Digital Transgender Suicide Memories and Ecological Rhetorical Agency — Rhetoric & Composition

Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jan 2019

The Queer Kairotic: Digital Transgender Suicide Memories and Ecological Rhetorical Agency

Joe Edward Hatfield University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract

When two transgender teenagers posted eerily similar suicide letters to public Tumblr accounts in late 2014 and early 2015, they inspired a viral memorialization effort across the website. In this article, I argue the widespread circulation of transgender suicide rhetoric facilitates the possibility for queer rhetors to provoke collective enactments of rhetorical agency even after their deaths. I identify the suicide letters as an emergent rhetorical form, which on its dissemination and due to its intelligibility, incites a kairotic moment. The kairotic moment may be protracted by a network of bodies who feel and collectively reproduce its sensate exigence. As it becomes viral, the kairotic moment acts as the queer futurity of ecological rhetorical agency because it stretches the visceral pressure of exigence beyond its original spatiotemporal emergence, draws bodies into collaborative networks, and orients invention toward the dismantling of normative rhetorical constructs and the composition of alternative worlds.

Journal: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published: 2019-01-01
DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2018.1549334
Open Access: Closed
Topics: gender and writing

Citation Context

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