Rhetorical listening : identification, gender, whiteness / Krista Ratcliffe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ratcliffe, Krista, 1958-

Series:

Studies in rhetorics and feminisms

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--United States.

English language.

English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching.

Listening--Study and teaching (Higher).

Listening.

United States.

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States.

Report writing.

Report writing--Study and teaching (Higher).

Listening--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States.

Minorities--Education (Higher)--United States.

Minorities.

Minorities--Education (Higher).

Women--Education (Higher)--United States.

Women.

Women--Education (Higher).

Multicultural education--United States.

Multicultural education.

Feminism and education--United States.

Feminism and education.

Physical Description:

xiv, 225 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [2005]

Summary:

Long-ignored within rhetoric and composition studies, listening has returned to the disciplinary radar. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness argues that rhetorical listening facilitates conscious identifications needed for cross-cultural communication. Krista Ratcliffe establishes eavesdropping, listening metonymically, and listening pedagogically as approaches to rhetorical listening. She defines and models rhetorical listening, addressing identifications with gender and whiteness within public debates, scholarship, and pedagogy.

Offering an approach grounded in classical rhetorical theory, Heideggerian theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory, Ratcliffe presents rhetorical listening as an invention tactic that engages spoken and written texts and supplements reading, writing, speaking, and silence as a rhetorical art.

Theorizing intersections of gender and whiteness, Rhetorical Listening examines how whiteness functions as an "invisible" racial category and provides disciplinary and cultural reasons for the displacement of listening and for the use of rhetorical listening as a code of cross-cultural conduct. Ratcliffe presents rhetorical listening in terms of cultural logics, stances, and dominant interpretive tropes. She highlights the modern identification theory of Kenneth Burke and the postmodern identification and disidentification theory of Diana Fuss and presents non-identification as a more productive site for rhetorical listening.

Rhetorical Listening offers a mode of historiography that shifts emphasis from origins to usage, traces the U.S. trope of whiteness to expose its dysfunctions, and demonstrates how dysfunctions of whiteness have restricted agency throughout history. The volume extends beyond the feminist rhetorical project, contributing substantially to rhetorical history and theory.

Contents:

Introduction: Translating Listening into Language and Action 1

1 Defining Rhetorical Listening 17

2 Identifying Places of Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Disidentification, and Non-Identification 47

3 Listening Metonymically: A Tactic for Listening to Public Debates 78

4 Eavesdropping: A Tactic for Listening to Scholarly Discourses 101

5 Listening Pedagogically: A Tactic for Listening to Classroom Resistance 133

Appendix Teaching Materials for Writing about Gender and Whiteness 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-218) and index.

ISBN:

080932668X

0809326698

OCLC:

59881776