#RhetoricSoWhite and US centered: Reflections on challenges and opportunities

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I interrogate the normalized characteristics of whiteness embedded in the disciplinary norms and forms of knowledge production in the field of Rhetorical Studies. I attend to the normative ways the exclusion of the knowledge(s) and experiences of non-White, non-Western, non-US people reproduces systemic erasure and Euro-American dominant ways of thinking about rhetoric stepped in coloniality and whiteness. I present what has been thoroughly theorized by Feminist, Queer, Trans*, Chicana, Latina/x, Third World, Indigenous, and Black rhetorical scholars that mere “inclusion” and “tolerance” of difference with regards to race, class, gender, ability, sexuality and nationality cannot fully address the violence of white capitalist heteropatriarchy in academia. I propose that rhetorical scholars should pay careful attention to voice and relationality in our scholarly works in order to address the concealments of coloniality and difference in our theorizing and production of knowledge.