Not One More! Feminicidio On the Border

Abstract

strates Pender’s primary argument throughout the book – that, by moving beyond critique and turning towards invention, rhetoricians can reread our respective contexts or objects of study and consider useful solutions with far-reaching applicability. Being at Genetic Risk offers a compelling solution to the question of where to proceed when critique falls short of emancipation, and the flip from choice to care with BRCA is an ideal context to explore the possibilities of creatively rereading new topoi using invention. The use of praxiography to discuss the way that BRCA risk is enacted provides a clear and memorable application of new materialism to rhetoric. While Pender gives her reasoning for only studying women with confirmed BRCA mutations, since their risk management has the clearest clinical guidelines, I find myself thinking about people with breasts and ovaries who do not identify as women. Hence, my use of “BRCA+ patients” rather than “BRCA+ women” throughout this review. The choices these individuals must make, as well as those for maleidentifying patients with BRCA mutations, similarly require a sensitivity to care due to the unique threat to masculine identity – although I recognize that to take up these ideas could very well comprise its own book. The exploration of Mol’s logics of choice (market vs. civic) contrasted with a rhetoric of care, as well as Pender’s application of this distinction to a BRCA+ context, has practical and theoretical implications for health communication literatures on patient–provider communication and shared decision-making. Ultimately, as Pender suggests, choice as a cultural ideal is somewhat dissonant with the material challenges of illness and risk, since these situations in themselves offer limited freedom. By rethinking invention to reorient a logic of choice to a rhetoric of care, Pender puts forth a new mode of engagement that rhetoricians can use to intervene, not just on behalf of the at-risk, but for any group in need of productive solutions.