S1: E4 “Beyond the Canon: A Post-Mortem on the History of Rhetoric”
Episode via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbXOuJZB_QU
About S1: E4
What happens when the history of rhetoric moves beyond the canon and into the realities of everyday life?
In this episode of Queerstories of Recovery: Voices from the Margin, Dr. Dani Bacibianco invites former students to think more about the classical tradition through the lenses of queer studies, feminist rhetoric, and addiction recovery.
Together, they ask what becomes possible when rhetorical concepts like “logos,” “ethos,” “pathos,” and “kairos” are understood not just as the ancient dead-white-men’s theories, but as embodied practices shaped by survival, identity, and community, by those who represent a multitude of lived experiences and cultural diversities.
The goal of the conversation was to explore the limitations of how rhetorical canon that is centered primarily on classical Western traditions urges scholars to study contemporary recovery narratives, queer rhetorics, and marginalized voices as a way to expand theoretical understanding of persuasion, language meaning-making, and knowledge power structures.
Over the course of the episode, the participants retell and rework the tensions that came up for them when they noticed rhetorical theory moving away from the safety of privileged whiteliness and took interested in a tangible rhetorical way of being, the lived realities of communities that encounter addiction, trauma, mental illness, gender, queerness, and institutional authority.
Rather than rejecting the classical tradition, this episode asks what it means to read beyond it, and further, to not be afraid to question it.
What does it really look like to imagine a rhetorical studies that is more inclusive, socially engaged, and responsive to the complexities of contemporary life?