Rhetorical Altermobilities: A Framework for the Study of Discourse, Mobility, and Resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on interdisciplinary mobility scholarship, I introduce rhetorical altermobilities as the discursive alteration of individual or collective (im)mobility for purposes of resistance. A rhetorical altermobilities framework encourages the analysis of the form and function of rhetorical altermobilities in order to discern possibilities for rhetorical resistance. Applying this framework, I argue that in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. leverages rhetorical altermobilities by reconstructing the meaning of both his own mobility and the mobility of the larger Civil Rights movement. This illustrates both the utility of this framework in beginning to elucidate the complex and nuanced relationship between discourse, mobility, and resistance, and the potential for its use in gleaning still new information from oft- and well-studied artifacts.