Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric
Searching the Negative Spaces in Histories of Rhetoric
By (author) Lydia McDermott
Publication date:
22 June 2016Length of book:
182 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498513395
Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric posits rhetoric and gynecology as sister discourses. While rhetoric has been historically concerned with the regulation of the productive male body, gynecology has been concerned with the discipline of the female reproductive body. Lydia M. McDermott examines these sister discourses by tracing key narrative moments in the development of thought about sexed bodies and about rhetorical discourse, from classical myth and natural philosophy to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decline of midwifery and the rise of scientific writing on the reproductive body. Liminal Bodies offers a metaphorical method of invention and criticism, “sonogram,” that emphasizes the voices and bodies that have been left on the margins of the dominant histories of rhetoric.
McDermott’s text presents an interdisciplinary and intersectional sonogram rhetoric that works to “listen as well as speak, and always transcends its own boundaries” by “helping to construct more eidolons” (155). This approach has exciting future research implications for analyzing the ways we “form rhetoric, practice scientific inquiry, and value certain bodies over others,” and should be considered a valuable resource for rhetoricians and technical communicators interested in pursuits of reproductive justice.