Rhetoricizing alienation: Mary Wollstonecraft and the rhetorical construction of women's oppression

Feminist scholars have grappled with the issue of women's experiences of alienation in diverse ways. Relying on Marxist materialist critiques of alienation, scholars have been frustrated by the inability to explain adequately women's experiences of alienation. In this essay, a “rhetoricized” conception of alienation is advanced through the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, a British feminist writing in the 1790s. Wollstonecraft's theories suggest that alienation is a discursive problem posed by the interpellation of women throughout history and the reification of those interpellations over time. As a rhetorically material experience, alienation functions as a critical rhetoric suggesting a hierarchical potential embedded in ideology.