Comparative Rhetoric, Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms: A Geopolitical Approach

Abstract

This essay examines methodological practices in comparative rhetoric over the past three decades and suggests that the field conceive new perspectives to engage with transnational spaces, hybrid identities, and subjectivities grounded in differences related to gender, race, class, and culture. Drawing on insights from postcolonial and transnational feminist studies, the author explores the implications of contemporary theories for comparative work and develops an approach that links the cultural specificities of particular non-Western rhetorics with larger geopolitical forces and networks. Through an analysis of early-twentieth-century Chinese women's discourse on nüquanzhuyi, she argues that a geopolitical approach focusing on how rather than what we read would help practitioners rethink history, identity, and the nature of theoretical investigation in the field and set the stage for more nuanced and sophisticated studies of non-Western rhetorics in the twenty-first century.