Toward a Posthuman Perspective: Feminist Rhetorical Methodologies and Everyday Practices

ABSTRACT This article considers the emergence of methodological patterns, or “sanctioned narratives,” within feminist rhetorical historiography, arguing that with just a few exceptions these patterns have anchored our work to conceptions of the woman-as-rhetor exercising deliberate, strategic agency against her world, rather than within it. While this conception has been enormously productive in redefining what “counts” in the history of rhetoric, it also constrains our attempts to pursue broader methodological projects that take as their subject the interworkings of rhetoric, power, and gender. After describing the ways that existing methodological patterns have become entrenched, this article offers one method for shifting our commitments, a feminist-materialist methodology. Influenced by theories of posthuman agency and by actor-network theory, this method can help feminist rhetoricians pursue broader conceptions of rhetoric that will allow us to intervene more effectively in the rhetorical production and transformation of gender relations and power dynamics.