Antinarcissistic Rhetoric: Reinforcing Social Inequities through Gender Performance

Abstract

Antinarcissistic rhetoric refers to the ways in which women rhetors appropriate patriarchal discourses in order to create an ethos with their audience. This rhetoric often reinforces the social inequities that require women's silence in the first place. A look to the rhetoric of two historical women, Hortensia and Queen Elizabeth I, theorizes antinarcissistic rhetoric in three parts: the dual gender performance, the use of psogos, and the dismissal of the corporeal body.