Cindy L. Griffin

Beyond persuasion: A proposal for an invitational rhetoric

Most traditional rhetorical theories reflect a patriarchal bias in the positive value they accord to changing and thus dominating others. In this essay, an alternative rhetoric—invitational rhetoric—is proposed, one grounded in the feminist principles of equality, immanent value, and self‐determination. Its purpose is to offer an invitation to understanding, and its communicative modes are the offering of perspectives and the creation of the external conditions of safety, value, and freedom.

Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move Toward Civility

Although not the first, the theory of invitational rhetoric offers a significant challenge to a strict definition of rhetoric as persuasion. Invitational rhetorics link to feminism, paring of persuasion with violence, and the polysemic nature of theory, generated both interest and critique. This essay explores six common critiques of invitational rhetoric and illustrates the ways that invitational rhetoric is at work in the world in both historical and contemporary public deliberations. The essay concludes by articulating a link between invitational rhetoric and civility, suggesting that invitational rhetoric and civility are a means to create ethical exchanges in difficult situations.

The Essentialist Roots of the Public Sphere: A Feminist Critique.

Questions of the origin and scope of the public sphere have been framed in various ways by scholars over the past two decades. This essay explores the essentialist influences on this sphere from a feminist perspective suggesting that an essentialist ideology informs the public/private distinction. The public sphere, this essay argues, is not strictly a result of historical changes or economic influences; it also is dependent on an essentialist view of women and men. The kinds of communication that are privileged as a result of essentialist influences on the public sphere are considered as well.

Rhetoricizing alienation: Mary Wollstonecraft and the rhetorical construction of women's oppression

Feminist scholars have grappled with the issue of womens experiences of alienation in diverse ways. Relying on Marxist materialist critiques of alienation, scholars have been frustrated by the inability to explain adequately womens experiences of alienation. In this essay, a “rhetoricized” conception of alienation is advanced through the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, a British feminist writing in the 1790s. Wollstonecrafts theories suggest that alienation is a discursive problem posed by the interpellation of women throughout history and the reification of those interpellations over time. As a rhetorically material experience, alienation functions as a critical rhetoric suggesting a hierarchical potential embedded in ideology.

Transforming Rhetoric Through Feminist Reconstruction: A Response to the Gender Diversity Perspective

In this response to Condits essay, the tenets of her gender diversity perspective are outlined and addressed. The authors conclude that although Condits tenets concerning gender are visionary, those concerning rhetoric constitute a defense of a traditional conception of rhetoric, unchanged by gender and feminism. They then outline the tenets of their feminist-reconstructionist perspective, one which focuses on the reconstruction of rhetoric through a feminist lens.

Women as communicators: Mary Daly's hagiography as rhetoric

In 1987, Spitzack and Carter made a call for a greater understanding of the notion of women as communicators. While feminist scholars have explored the various aspects of this notion both before and after Spitzack and Carters call, the work of Mary Daly, a radical philosopher and theologian, can be used to develop this conceptualization in a more comprehensive way. A theory of women as communicators developed from Dalys writings reveals the existence of a rhetorical foreground that silences and oppresses women, and alternative realm of rhetoric, the Background, in which women act as communicators. A theory of rhetoric based on the notion of women as communicators also reveals an alternative framework with which to assess rhetorics that do not fit easily into our more traditional frameworks. In this essay, the author develops and explores Dalys theory of women as communicators suggesting that Dalys theory assists rhetorical scholars in expanding the perimeters of the communication discipline and in exp...

A web of reasons: Mary Wollstonecraft's a vindication of the rights of woman and the re‐weaving of form

Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792, stands as one of the most comprehensive historical documents in the argument for the rights of women. Controversial at the time it was written, its content and form have received considerable criticism in the 200 years since its publication. In this essay, a non‐linear model of argument is proposed, based on an analysis of the form of Vindication, which assists scholars in recognizing the complexity of the work as well as the need to reconsider notions of effective rhetorical form.

Women\'s Studies in Communication Still Matters

When we coedited our special issue of Women’s Studies in Communication (2009, volume 32, issue 1), ‘‘Power Feminism: Exploring Agency, Oppression, and Victimage,’’ Karma was a graduate student concerned about directions in which she saw some feminist scholarship heading. Some of those directions seemed like perfect embodiments of broader cultural turns toward the neoliberal privatization of the social and the attendant cult of personal responsibility. Cindy was equally as concerned, and out of our increasingly shared perspective, we laid the groundwork for the special issue. Despite our clear political point of view on power feminism, in our introduction to that issue, we wrote, ‘‘[C]onversations about what our feminisms are, how we define them, and how they move us forward in the world are among the most important feminist conversations that we could have’’ (Chávez & Griffin, 2009, p. 2). In that spirit, our interest was not in foreclosing conversations or silencing perspectives; in fact, we were committed to featuring an array of voices. WSIC is the only journal in the field of communication where we could imagine having hosted that special issue. This journal continues to serve vital functions in the field, and it will do so no matter what we call it. Those functions include featuring the best in feminist communication scholarship and serving an important pedagogical purpose for newer scholars by helping them through the publication process. Undoubtedly, this mission and the journal’s name reflect its second-wave feminist beginnings, even as the mission and function has morphed over the years. We are not opposed to changing the name if, by some consensus, feminists in the field of communication determine that this is best. We will insist that some form of ‘‘women’s studies’’ remains and, in the remainder of this article, we will explain why. To begin, women’s studies (broadly conceptualized) has a history as a field of study that emerges from activist efforts and grassroots social movements; this is also true of women’s studies in communication. The preservation and promotion of such impetuses seems to us vital even if such pursuits remain fraught. Certainly, the histories of women’s studies are contested, diverging over questions regarding identity categories such as race, class, and sexuality and the systems of oppression

Special symposium: Reviews of books in applied communication

CONDITIONS OF LIBERTY: CIVIL SOCIETY AND ITS RIVALS by Ernest Gellner. New York: Penguin, 1994;

Feminist Rhetorical Theories

27.95. LISTEN UP: VOICES FROM THE NEXT FEMINIST GENERATION. Edited by Barbara Findlen. Seattle, Washington: Seal, 1995; pp. xi‐264.