Feminist Rhetorical Science Studies: Human Bodies, Posthumanist Worlds

This edited collection disrupts tendencies in feminist science studies to dismiss rhetoric as having concern only for language, and it counters posthumanist theories that ignore human materialities and asymmetries of power as co-constituted with and through distinctions such as gender, sex, race, and ability. The eight essays model methodologies for doing feminist research in the rhetoric of science. Collectively they build innovative interdisciplinary bridges across the related but divergent fields of feminism, posthumanism, new materialism, and the rhetoric of science. Each essay addresses a question: How can feminist rhetoricians of science engage responsibly with emerging theories of the posthuman? Some contributors respond with case studies of fetal ultrasound, patient noncompliance, the neuroscience of sex differences, and drug trials of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; others respond with a critical review of object-oriented ontology and a framework for researching women technical writers in the workplace. The contributed essays are framed by a comprehensive introduction and a conclusion from the editors that underscore a key contribution of feminist posthumanist rhetoric-that it rethinks the agencies of people, things, and practices in ways that can bring about more ethical human relations. Individually contributors offer as much variety as consensus on matters of methodology. Together these essays demonstrate how a feminist posthumanist approach to science expands our notions of what rhetoric is and does without sacrificing what makes their inquiries distinctively rhetorical.