Liminal bodies, reproductive health, and feminist rhetoric : searching the negative spaces in histories of rhetoric / Lydia McDermott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDermott, Lydia, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women's rights.

Human reproduction.

Women--Health and hygiene.

Women.

Fertility, Human.

Women--Social conditions.

Feminist theory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (183 pages)

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: rhetorical listening to negative space

Echo-location : classical conceptions

Wondering wombs : conception consumed

Echolocation and ventriloquism

Ambiguous forms : sonogram of a sophist

The maternal imagination of sonogram

The mêtic midwife

Genres of generation, reproduction instructions

The monstrous imagination of mêtis

Conclusion: reverberations

Bibliography.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

979-82-16-27242-7

1-4985-1340-9