Feminist Challenges or Feminist Rhetorics? Locations, Scholarship, Discourse

Book excerpt: The chapters collected in this book generate discussion about the intersections of feminisms and rhetorics, as well as the ways in which those intersections are productive. This collection focuses on the locations of feminist rhetorics, the various discourses that invoke “feminism” or “feminist,” and the scholarship that provokes, challenges, and deliberates issues of key concern. In focusing on challenge and location, this collection acknowledges the academic and socio-discursive spaces that feminisms, and rhetorics on or about feminisms, inhabit. Feminism, but also women and what it means to be a woman, is a signifier under siege in public discourse. The chapters included here speak to the challenges and diversities of feminist rhetoric and discourse in public and private life, in the academy, and in the media. The authors represented in this collection present potential consequences for communities in the academy and beyond, spanning international, geopolitical, racial, and religious contexts.