{"title":"COVID-19 conspiracy rhetoric and other primal fantasies","authors":"C. Kelly","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2142654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2142654","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Planet Lockdown, a documentary film, claims that the COVID-19 pandemic was manufactured by finance capitalists, Silicon Valley, and the pharmaceutical industry to microchip the population, consolidate global wealth, and enslave the population. Viral videos from the film have received tens of millions of engagements throughout social networks and media, constituting a major source of COVID-19 disinformation. This article argues that COVID-19 enslavement fantasies consummate white conservative fears of racial displacement, brought on by an impending demographic shift and greater visibility of antiracist activism throughout the early stages of the pandemic. I argue that Planet Lockdown’s preoccupation with so-called “modern slavery” restages a national primal scene to resecure white power as perceptions of its dominance wanes: a fantasy of the origins of the liberal subject that omits that subject’s relationship to slavery and anti-Blackness. By imagining slavery as a future threat to white selfhood rather than the structural organization of a society underwritten by anti-Blackness, COVID-19 conspiracy rhetoric facilitates a disavowal of the structural legacy of white supremacy.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76160469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The “Because Science” meme as virtual commonplace","authors":"Lynda C. Olman","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2143550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2143550","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent scholarship in virtual rhetorics has demonstrated that we must abandon static notions of place if we wish to account for the rhetorical effects of internet memes and other forms of virtual argumentation. However, displacing virtual rhetorics entirely effaces grounds for collective political action, particularly political resistance organized in virtual environments such as internet forums. We can restore this crucial grounding, without sacrificing an orientation to circulation, by treating memes as commonplaces in a topological framework. A commonplace approach to virtual rhetorics further revivifies for us the essential virtuality of Aristotle’s original topical doctrine. This interanimation of current and classical rhetorics is dramatized via a case study of the ironic reversal of political polarity in the “Because Science” meme.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89667604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Small dick problems: Masculine entitlement as rhetorical strategy","authors":"Allison L. Rowland","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2136739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2136739","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay aims to sharpen the term entitlement for critical scholars by positing entitlement as a rhetorical strategy of hierarchy maintenance. The Reddit community r/SmallDickProblems, intended to provide support for men with small penises, furnishes an appropriate case study for threatened masculinity employing entitlement claims to maintain status. Abetted by the affordances of scale and anonymity associated with networked platforms, the men at r/SmallDickProblems assert affective and epistemic entitlements to recoup what they perceive to be a natural gendered hierarchy. Content advisory: This essay examines discourses concerning misogyny, transphobia, and suicide.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90813695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Better never means better for everyone”: White feminist necropolitics and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale","authors":"M. Neville-Shepard","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2136738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2136738","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article builds on those who have critiqued Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale along racial lines and calls into question the esteemed status the show holds as a rhetorical resource for contemporary feminist activism. By drawing attention to the parasitical relationship that the archetype of the vulnerable (but resilient) white woman has to Black pain and death, I argue that the series further calcifies the dominance of white feminism, enacting what I term “white feminist necropolitics.” To illuminate this theory, the essay presents a close analysis of The Handmaid's Tale. Specifically, I demonstrate how the show deploys post-racial logics to center a white feminist heroine whose story of saviorism relies on the cooptation of Black pain and the exploitation of Black death. Ultimately, this critical reading of the series points to the ways in which white feminism and necropolitics are intricately entangled.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85900655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Privacy, precarity, and political change: Connecting gendered violence to reproductive injustice","authors":"S. Enck","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2128206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2128206","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay examines the interplay between systems of gendered violence and reproductive injustice especially as they exist within frameworks of public and private spheres of knowledge/ experience. I suggest that like domestic violence, abortion care is often articulated as a private issue in need of public support and resources. This framing undercuts the systemic operation of power and control at the cultural level that sustains intersectional violence against people who are already most vulnerable under neocolonial/ hetero-patriarchal/ white supremacist/ capitalist oppression. As feminist activists in the U.S. lament the fall of Roe v. Wade, we ought to use the exigence of the Dobbs decision to collectively demand more robust access to reproductive justice by centering the intersectional experiences of people for whom abortion care in the U.S. has never been meaningfully accessible.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76928810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“An Empire for Liberty”: Reassessing US Presidential Foreign Policy Rhetoric","authors":"A. Prasch, Mary E. Stuckey","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2128202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2128202","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Empire is central to US foreign policy aims but is rarely taken directly into account in studies of American presidential foreign policy rhetoric. We argue here that in doing such studies, analytic attention should be paid to questions of empire as foundational to the development of the United States and to articulations of the American nation. We examine two historical and two heuristic categories used to understand US presidential foreign policy discourse and argue for refocusing analysis by placing questions of whiteness, empire, and colonialism at the core of those categories.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79517324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assimilation: An Alternative History","authors":"Katlyn E. Williams","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2144188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2144188","url":null,"abstract":"petuated by deportations are lacking in Goodman’s analysis. The story of immigration told in Goodman’s book is largely focused on racial categories, moving from its beginnings in Chinese communities into the demonization of Latina/o/x immigrants. In an analysis of coercive immigrant violence, the lack of intersectional discussions (namely, of women and queer migrants) leaves the story wholly incomplete and, as a reader, it left me wanting. I recommend The Deportation Machine as an excellent primer for deportations and coercive immigrant violence, rather than treat it as an exhaustive account. Goodman’s history broadens the definition of deportations, providing the reader with an appreciation of the dark side of immigration enforcement in the United States. Goodman’s undertaking is a reminder that no history is truly lost in the modern age, that even the best efforts of the state cannot erase their sins from recording. His clearly laid out history provides the reader with a renewed appreciation of complexity of the machine, and how it dehumanizes and demonizes its subjects. While not perfect in its nuance, it provides an excellent framework for scholars to investigate the machine and to build on the vast archive of texts that Goodman provides.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78289530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abortion language, nesting dolls theory, and an autoethnographic plea for radical transformation","authors":"S. Tillman, A. Johnson","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2128207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2128207","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Because of anti-abortion rhetoric, people must dedicate a lifetime to learning what decisions are one's own and how to talk about abortion socially, religiously, politically, secretly, and publicly. In this short article, we rely on the nesting doll theory to unpack the complex layers of rhetoric that control how people understand decision making processes regarding a body's reproductive potential. We use autoethnographic techniques to offer lived experience as evidence of the intricate ways anti-abortion rhetoric and reproductive injustice taints the entire system of bodily autonomy via guilt, shame, coercion, lack of consent, and, ultimately, lack of bodily autonomy.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81439850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Embracing the subjunctive voice: An analytic for ecologically uncertain times","authors":"K. Lind","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2128200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2128200","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I assess viral videos depicting environmental crises and species loss, theorizing the “eco-subjunctive voice” as a rhetorically productive perspective for engaging extinction imagery. Building on Barbie Zelizer's notion of the “subjunctive voice” in images, I explore how viral videos of a polar bear and a sea turtle in jeopardy unite despair and hopefulness, strategically deploy “about-to-die” moments, and make the “hyperobjects” of climate catastrophe more intelligible. Additionally, an eco-subjunctive reading of each video demonstrates the limits of the synecdochic logic commonly employed in ecological discourse. The eco-subjunctive voice is an analytic useful for academics, activists, and audiences. Its capacious character and ability to accommodate contingency and complexity make the eco-subjunctive voice a powerful rhetorical resource in the effort to combat ecological disaster.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88820685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhetorics of Race and Religion on the Christian Right: Barack Obama and the War on Terror","authors":"M. Parnell","doi":"10.1080/00335630.2022.2144185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2144185","url":null,"abstract":"1. Gun Violence Archive, “2021,” Jan. 4, 2022, https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls; “Fatal Force,” The Washington Post, Dec. 28, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/; and Charlie Savage, “What Trump Told Supporters Before Mob Stormed Capitol,” The New York Times, Jan. 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-riot.html.","PeriodicalId":51545,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Speech","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85340234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}