On Feminist Material Rhetorics--a Reading of Burton's work embedded in feminist rhetoric

In feminist rhetorical histories, scholars have undertaken a widescale recovery project to both recover and uncover rhetorical texts by women and regender the rhetorical tradition (see Bizzell, Glenn). The concept of materiality is frequently raised in this work as feminist scholars have accounted for the ways in which women’s texts and perspectives were muted or controlled by specific material conditions—pregnancy, childrearing, domestic labor, and care of others--and strictures against women speaking, reading, writing, or taking part openly in public life. To describe some of these specific conditions, the concept of “material rhetoric” and material analysis has been offered as a method and methodology by a number of feminist scholars. I discuss this work to point to the helpful insights it has created, but also to address how this work has defined a material approach to rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies that is grounded in the concept of material culture and cultural materialisms, not historical materialisms.

A wonderful example of “material rhetoric” applied in a historical context can be found in the 1999 essay by Vicki Tolar Collins on the rhetoric of Hester Anne Rogers, a British Methodist who was an 18th century spiritual leader and mystic. Collins’ article sets forth a method and methodology for studying the work of Rogers that is grounded in material rhetoric, what Collins refers to as the “theoretical investigating of discourse by examining how the rhetorical aims and functions of the initial text are changed by the processes of material production and distribution” (547). Drawing on Michel Foucault, Jerome McGann, feminist Christina Haas and more broadly on reception theory and the history of the book, Collins argues for material rhetoric as a rhetorical methodology that “is interested in the broad implications of materiality, such as cultural formations and the shaping of gender roles” (547). Material rhetoric, according to Collins, examines “the rhetorical functions in relationships among authors, text(s), publishing authorities, discourse communities, and readers” (547). A key focus of material rhetoric with respect to gender is the act of accretion, “the process of layering additional texts over and around the original text” (547). Collins is particularly interested in studying how rhetorical accretion enacted on women’s texts helps feminist critics analyze “material practices as mechanisms for controlling women’s discourse and shaping representations of gender” (548). In other words, material rhetoric is useful for feminist rhetoricians as it will allow us to examine how women’s texts and voices have been “culturally silenced” or muted. Collins argues that material rhetoric, when joined with the work of feminist historiography and feminist ethnography, can help feminist rhetoricians compile “material evidence of social, institutional, and commercial structures that brought women’s rhetoric texts to print” and assess they ways in which they were modified over time to fit particular rhetorical purposes (50).

Through her analysis of the ways in which Hester Rogers’ text undergoes accretion through prefatory remarks by male authorities, Collins shows us how Rogers’ role in the Methodist church and her relationship with church founder John Wesley was modified to fit particular cultural narratives that diminished and muted Roger’s influence and leadership in the church and that redirected the cultural gaze away from her relationship with church founder John Wesley. Through the process of rhetorical accretion, Rogers’ life and contributions were strategically managed by patriarchal authorities, thus her cultural and political influence were muted. Through her analysis of the material process of rhetorical accretion, Collins provides readers with an intimate look at the gendered, material dynamics of the publication and circulation of women’s texts. Thus, Collins’ work is a key example of how histories of rhetoric have increasingly embraced the “materiality” of texts and social practices while drawing upon feminist theories of gender and culture.

It should be clear, though, that Collin’s focus is not specifically on the material conditions of women’s lives during Rogers’ time, although she does address that theme to some extent. Her interest is primarily in the ways that Rogers' persona is constructed and managed rhetorically by patriarchal authorities through the various published editions of her spiritual journal. Therefore, the physical artifact of the text and its various editions takes precedence in Collin’s analysis because it is a concrete, physical artifact to analyze, but also because the text allows her to demonstrate a site where power, authority, and control are materially enacted over the body, reputation, and legacy of a woman.

Likewise, also working in historical rhetoric, Roxanne Mountford and Carol Mattingly and a number of other feminist rhetoric scholars have addressed material culture quite specifically with a focus on material spaces and material artifacts. Mountford analyzes women’s rhetorical practices as preachers, analyzing how “space, the body, and delivery” operate (3). In the introduction to The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces, Mountford acknowledges the rich work of feminist rhetorical historians, but she notes that none of these theorists have engaged ethnographic research. Most feminist rhetoricians focus on textual studies—examining rhetorical texts and contexts, visiting archives and repositories to uncover women’s texts, but feminist rhetoricians tend not to engage ethnographic research. It was through her own ethnographic study of three contemporary women preachers that Mountford “recognized the need to focus on the materiality of rhetorical performance” (4). Her study contributes, as she notes, to not only focusing on a “neglected art in the history of rhetoric”—preaching—but on understanding the function of gendered “performance, space, and the body” through ethnographic study. Ethnography as a research method allows Mountford to capture the performative qualities of women’s preaching and to examine much more than just textual practices—actual bodies moving through space and time, living, breathing, and witnessing with and among a congregation. In addition, Mountford is interested in actual physical spaces—“lecterns, auditoriums, platforms, confession booths,” but specifically in the pulpit, “the embodiment of clerical authority, a gendered location” and, thus, “ a rich site for exploring rhetorical space” (17). Throughout the book, Mountford combines rhetorical analysis of the history of preaching and women preachers with close ethnographic observation of the material world, shuttling back and forth between analysis of historical texts and ethnographic analysis of the material world. In doing so, she analyzes how “the body is not only an instrument of expression, but it also itself expressive of meaning” (7). As Mountford puts it, “it is really not possible to think about rhetoric without drawing in considerations of the body” (8) Thus, refiguring delivery as a canon of rhetoric “is critically important for feminist transformation of rhetorical theory” (9).

Paralleling the work done by Mountford, other feminist scholars have considered how the body, delivery, rhetorical space, and rhetorical artifacts need to be considered. This work has taken a variety of tacks and strategies. Nan Johnson has examined gender and rhetorical space and women’s parlor rhetorics in antebellum America. Carol Mattingly has addressed the rhetorical uses and effects of dress and costume for women platform speakers’ and writers, focusing specifically on the connection between dress, costume, and delivery. Lindal Buchanan has analyzed the effects of the gendered body on delivery and public reception. Scholars such as Maureen Goggin and Liz Rohan have examined women’s material artifacts—samplers and quilts--as forms of rhetoric. Clearly, we have arrived at a place in feminist rhetorical studies where the body, lived experience, and material artifacts set the terms for rhetorical discussion, and where feminist rhetorical methods and methodologies are moving beyond rhetorical analyses that consider texts to rhetorical analyses that consider a wide variety of material practices and objects.