Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

"If You're Not Outraged...": White Feminist Feelings, Rhetoric, and the Enthymematic Circulation of White Supremacy

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/mw22vb95t

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  • While a number of scholars in the field of Rhetoric and Composition continue to reassert the importance of whiteness as an object of study, a sense of anxiety about the effectiveness of extant antiracist rhetorical practices permeate recent scholarship. This thesis engages with thinking from black studies, afropessimism, and transnational feminisms in order to generate more effective analytical tools for identifying and critiquing white feminist investments in whiteness and the various forms of exploitation and domination whiteness perpetuates. Chapter 1 first identifies two counter-productive strains pervading white feminist rhetorics, which I refer to as altruistic antiracism and enthymematic antiblackness, and proposes moving away from these two rhetorics toward what I call self-interested solidarity and radical anti-whiteness. Chapter 2 then illustrates this shifted orientation in a case study analysis of two popular white feminist rhetorics from the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally: Tina Fey's "sheet-caking" monologue and Samantha Bee's "Life After Hate" segment. Through this case study, I demonstrate some of the ways white feminist rhetorics rely on, communicate, and therefore prop up white supremacy even as they seek to dismantle it.
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  • 2019-06-08 to 2021-07-09

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