Amanda K. Booher and Julie Jung, eds. Feminist Rhetorical Science Studies: Human Bodies, Posthumanist Worlds. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018. 260 pages. $40.00 paperback.

Abstract

In recent years, many rhetoricians have expressed interest in the so-called “new materialisms,” a cluster of theoretical approaches that allows for more nuanced ways of understanding the workings of rhetoric beyond deliberate human symbolic action. These approaches equip the field to address broader questions of “how some changes happen” via the interactions among human and non-human actors alike (32). Yet as the co-editors of Feminist Rhetorical Science Studies: Human Bodies, Posthumanist Worlds suggest, not all new materialisms are the same, and as each contributor to this collection demonstrates convincingly, their differences have important implications for feminist scholars of rhetoric, particularly those working in the rhetoric of science. More specifically, co-editors Amanda K. Booher and Julie Jung challenge what they see as “depoliticized uptakes” of new materialisms within rhetorical studies (1). They join a growing number of feminist scholars in observing that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and object-oriented ontology (OOO) approaches, in particular, situate human and non-human beings “on equal immanent planes, affecting and being affected by each other in (potentially) equal measure” (2). As a result, these approaches tend to “eclipse issues of difference within the category of ‘human’ and thus elide questions about how such distinctions get made, why they get made, and to what effect” (2). Drawing from ANT and OOO in formulating theory and performing analysis is thus problematic for feminist scholars, who are committed to scholarship that exposes and challenges asymmetrical power relationships among human beings. By teasing out differences among ANT, OOO, and agential realism, Booher and Jung aim to locate and elucidate ways of doing feminist posthumanist research in the rhetoric of science that avoids these pitfalls. Additionally, the authors seek to facilitate alliances among three distinct but overlapping groups of scholars: feminist rhetoricians, rhetoricians of science, and feminist science studies scholars. They also demonstrate how research in feminist rhetorics can usher the work of other feminist new materialist scholars toward more concrete political action. The book includes a prologue, introduction, conclusion, and eight body chapters authored by scholars at all stages of their careers. After laying out the dynamic and contingent ways the authors are constructing feminist rhetorical science studies (FRSS) as a field of inquiry, the introduction offers a comprehensive overview of what the editors see as its relevant concepts and theories: posthumanism, feminist new materialism, posthumanist rhetorics, and feminist posthumanist rhetorics. Scholars new to posthuman or new materialist rhetorics will find this material especially useful in preparation for reading the body chapters, each of which considers the question of how feminist rhetoricians of science might engage “productively and responsibly” (32) with posthumanism. As a whole, the chapters offer a diverse and occasionally conflicting range of methods, inviting ongoing debate about what future directions the field might take. The first essay, “Of Complexity and Caution: Feminism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and the Practices of Scholarly Work,” offers an important call to feminist scholars to consider which Rhetoric Review, Vol. 38, No. 1, 108–118, 2019 © 2019 Sarah Hallenbeck ISSN: 0735-0198 print / 1532-7981 online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2019.1549414