Getting the story straight: coming out narratives and the possibility of a cultural rhetoric

Abstract

This paper begins with a belief that rhetorical practices play a central role in the construction of self. Specifically, this study explores how the ‘coming out’ stories of lesbians provide a means of negotiating both individual and collective identity within a cultural context that emphatically marginalizes everything ‘queer.’ As stories about rhetorical selves, coming out narratives may also serve political functions, locating rhetoric within the cultural forces of identity management and community building. My paper will explore the work that such narratives do for identity and community politics by emphasizing the mechanisms through which such representations of self sustain, as well as challenge binary logics of sexuality, essential notions of identity, and contemporary theories of rhetorical practice. By giving voice to members of a viable counter‐culture, and analyzing stories that trace individual women’s movement from the private closet to the public sphere, this paper enhances cross‐cultural studies and rhetorical theory and practice. This rhetorical tradition, I argue, is at the core of community building activities, and an understanding of the conventions for such rhetorical performances of identity is essential to any understanding of the culture and politics of the queer movement for liberation.