Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric: Searching the Negative Spaces in Histories of Rhetoric

by Lydia McDermott

Overview

Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric posits rhetoric and gynecology as sister discourses. While rhetoric has been historically concerned with the regulation of the productive male body, gynecology has been concerned with the discipline of the female reproductive body. Lydia M. McDermott examines these sister discourses by tracing key narrative moments in the development of thought about sexed bodies and about rhetorical discourse, from classical myth and natural philosophy to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decline of midwifery and the rise of scientific writing on the reproductive body. Liminal Bodies offers a metaphorical method of invention and criticism, “sonogram,” that emphasizes the voices and bodies that have been left on the margins of the dominant histories of rhetoric.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498540483
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	04/11/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	5.92(w) x 8.81(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Lydia M. McDermott is assistant professor of composition and the director of the Center for Writing and Speaking at Whitman College.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Rhetorical Listening to Negative Space
Part I: Echo-Location: Classical Conceptions
Chapter 1: Wondering Wombs: Conception Consumed
Chapter 2: Echolocation and Ventriloquism
Chapter 3: Ambiguous Forms: Sonogram of a Sophist
Part II: The Maternal Imagination of Sonogram
Chapter 4: The Mêtic Midwife
Chapter 5: Genres of Generation, Reproduction Instructions
Chapter 6: The Monstrous Imagination of Mêtis
Conclusion: Reverberations

Editorial Reviews

The best audiences for Liminal Bodies are those interested in the rhetoric surrounding feminine health, either as scholars of health, of composition, or of health policy. The book will also appeal to male readers new to feminism and seeking a civil but implicating tutorial. Hopefully [there will be] a sequel to her marvelous book.

International Journal of Feminist Approaches To Bioethics

Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric is well-written and powerful. This book provides a compelling exploration of the feminine and hysterical echoes reverberating in the recesses of the rhetorical tradition and of the connections between reproductive and verbal power. McDermott's development of ‘sonogram rhetoric’ as an analytical lens is an important contribution to the field of rhetoric and composition, and one that promises to have wide application.

Marika Seigel

This beautifully written, deeply and eclectically researched book expands the fields of embodied rhetoric and disability studies. Historical and personal, reflective and political, careful and empowering, the reader is left listening for rhetorical echoes and reverberations wherever maternity, embodiment, and ability are invoked—and whenever the normative character of these concepts is ignored. Scholarly books should all be written so resourcefully, artistically, and honestly.

Jay Dolmage

McDermott’s text presents an interdisciplinary and intersectional sonogram rhetoric that works to “listen as well as speak, and always transcends its own boundaries” by “helping to construct more eidolons” (155). This approach has exciting future research implications for analyzing the ways we “form rhetoric, practice scientific inquiry, and value certain bodies over others,” and should be considered a valuable resource for rhetoricians and technical communicators interested in pursuits of reproductive justice.

Rhetoric Review