Abstract

Allison Rowland's Zoetropes and The Politics of Humanhood is about rhetorics of humanhood or how some come to be counted as human while others do not. It considers how hierarchies of humanhood are generated, sustained, and reordered, examining the discursive patterns by which movements along the scale of human valuation occur. The majority of the book is devoted to three case studies, each of which focuses on a distinct contemporary site: the American Gut Project's public information regarding the gut microbiome, the National Memorial for the Unborn's memorializations of aborted fetuses, and the gym scene in Boulder, Colorado. It is an eclectic set of cases, yet one that coheres in Rowland's conceptual framework and in its focus on health and body related issues: guts, abortion, and fitness.The book's title comes from the term “zoe,” which Rowland explains is “pronounced zoh-eh; rhymes with ‘no way’” (2). She gestures toward Giorgio Agamben in her use of the term but is clear that her usage is not the same as his notion of bare life. She appends “zoe” to “rhetorics” to identify the range of discursive moves by which life is valued and devalued across the spectrum of humanhood. As such, the book is very much about biopolitics and also, she takes care to emphasize, necropolitics. Citing Achille Mbembe's work, she stresses that when it comes to the hierarchies across which humanhood is ascribed, devaluations are an inevitable counterpart to elevations. She uses the term “transvaluation” to capture both forms of movement and their interconnectedness. And across case studies the book remains attentive to the dynamic by which humanhood's hierarchies produce both beneficiaries and casualties. As a whole, it convincingly illustrates the sort of insights that rhetoric, as field of study, brings to scholarly conversations around biopolitics and necropolitics.Rowland's book is firmly anchored in the rhetorical tradition. She aims to equip readers with a language for identifying and discussing the rhetorical patterns by which transvaluations occur. The term “zoerhetorics” is thematic, referencing modes of discursive transvaluation in general. But more specifically, Rowland is concerned with a specific iteration of zoerhetorics, zoetropes, or the figurative devices by which valuations along the hierarchy are enacted. For this, she draws from the deep well of rhetorical tropes, engaging long-standing—but now somewhat obscure—concepts like antonomasia and somatopeia to discern modes of figurative transvaluation. Her hope, she notes with a wry nod to its unlikely realization, is that even journalists or citizens might pick up this language and use it as a resource for naming and thereby more effectively addressing problematic zoerhetorics.It is fitting that Zoetropes and the Politics of Humanhood begins with the description of a classroom exercise the author uses to introduce students to some of the book's core ideas. Well-suited to adoption in an upper-level undergraduate or graduate course, the book explains key ideas and concepts in lucid and straightforward fashion and deploys specialized terminology judiciously. In addition, one of the book's notable strengths is its thoughtful self-reflexiveness. Rowland does not construe rhetorical analysis as a disembodied process but as one in which a positioned, sometimes personally-invested, self participates. For example, in a chapter on fitness culture in Boulder, Colorado that examines how certain privileged, fit bodies become valorized while others are cast as lesser-than, Rowland acknowledges her own participation in that culture. She describes some of her time at Boulder gyms, reflecting on the experience of complicity in that particular zoerhetoric. This is a candid illustration of what it looks like to critique rhetoric while not entirely exempt from that critique oneself.Perhaps the most compelling chapter is the one focused on pro-life fetal memorialization at the National Memorial for the Unborn. Rowland examines the myriad ways the memorial ascribes human status to the fetus, through memorial plaques inscribed with individual names, for example. In doing so, she engages in highly positioned rhetorical analysis. For example, she describes first encountering the memorial via a weblink: “I remember sitting up a little at my desk . . . —how interesting, I thought; this fetal memorialization stuff is a bigger deal than I thought” (81). Later she recounts taking a research trip to the National Memorial on Mother's Day, only to be surprised to find no one else there. She also acknowledges the difficulties of doing research in the pro-life community as someone who is herself pro-choice. The chapter offers a lesson in how we might communicate about our research process in a way that acknowledges personal context. And for students, it is a helpful illustration of the messiness of academic work in which a researcher might at times be intrigued, conflicted, disappointed, etcetera and must grapple with various challenges while making adjustments during the unpredictable research process.The zoerhetorics that determine who gets counted as human and who doesn't underwrite much tragedy throughout human history, legacies of oppression and violence, and misery wrought against those deemed less than others. Rowland's arguments meaningfully intersect with long-standing scholarly conversations around the rhetorics of race, class, and gender concerned with the same. And while her case studies arguably avoid the most horrific sites of zoerhetorical consequence, she attends to their terrible potential throughout the book. In Chapter One, she elaborates at some length on the Great Chain of Being as a foundational zoerhetoric, one that still structures, often implicitly, assumptions about who counts as most and least human. As an enduring Western hierarchization, it has facilitated no small amount of subjection throughout history. Her case study on the American Gut Project addresses how communication around gut microbes sometimes draws on paternalistic and colonial rhetorics in which racial hierarchization is also involved. At the same time, one can imagine other case studies that grapple with even darker material, which dwell more fully on the horrific consequence of casting some out of the realm of perceived humanhood.Given Zoetropes’ self-reflexive approach to research questions, methods, and findings, it is no surprise that the book has a more narrative quality than many monographs in rhetorical studies. Rowland tells the stories of her research process, while also convincingly demonstrating its results. Consequently, the book is engaging to read, well-positioned to hold the interest of a broad readership. At the same time, the book also systematically details various discursive moves by which zoerhetorics are enacted. Rowland includes a mini-glossary of key terms at the end of the introductory chapter and, in the conclusion, outlines what she calls “zoerhetorical theory's propositions,” an encapsulation of the book's key arguments across case studies.Zoetropes equips its readers with tools with which to name, conceptualize, and potentially dismantle hierarchies of valuation. The stakes are high. As Rowland argues throughout the book, zoetropic hierarchies determine which lives come to matter or not, with life-or-death consequence. It is a sign of the book's merit that readers will want to take its productive conceptual frameworks elsewhere. The book effectively beckons past itself, inviting us to apply Rowland's critical tools to cases beyond her own. It is an invitation worth accepting.