Crystal Stuvland

Professor Sherry Linkon

Capstone Independent Study

March 2017

INTRODUCTION

Women/Trans/Femme (WTF) Spokefolk DC began forming in the summer of

2016. I am a bicycle mechanic and many of my friends—mostly queer women and trans

folks—had been asking me to teach them some basic bike maintenance. They did not feel

comfortable taking classes in male-dominated spaces but were also uncomfortable in

women-only bike spaces in groups of straight, cisgender women who may misgender

them or treat them as an outsider. So I emailed some people I knew from a nearby bike

coop to get some equipment and volunteers and created a Facebook event. The event was

called “Backyard Basics” because I put it on in my backyard. It was only open to women

and trans folks, not cisgender men. It went so well that people wanted more, so I created

a Facebook group page by the same name and we met two or three times throughout the

summer.

About a month later, while reading rhetorical theory for class, I realized that what

I was doing was a project in public rhetoric and one that I could expand, study, and learn

from. Since that realization, I’ve focused on having regular meetings and studying the

rhetorical context of the group’s emergence.

While the end result of my capstone project is going to be a public-facing website

complete with maps, videos, history, and resources for people to get involved, much of

the rhetorical work I have done will not be showcased there. From the time that I put on

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the first workshop, I was doing rhetoric. I recognized an issue within bike culture and

found a gap that I could fill. Plus, with women/trans/femme workshops and bike clubs

forming throughout the US in the last few years, I was recognizing a kairotic moment and

organizing people around a common cause. And, throughout the process, I discovered a

space rich with rhetorical choices and strategies—and one that was centered around the

empowerment of women, trans, and femme folks through a communal education in

rhetorical agency.

To understand the theoretical underpinnings of my capstone, I first delve into

studying and thinking about it in the context of public sphere theory—theory that has

proven helpful in Spokefolk’s self-definition and purpose. From there I move on to look

at some examples of similar projects in public rhetoric, community engagement, and

activism—aligning my group with similar projects while also recognizing what makes it

different. I move from there to a more specific look at rhetorical agency in terms of the

technology of the bicycle, borrowing heavily from a one scholar and her recent book. All

of this is important background, which then allows me to build and explain the methods

I’ve used both in creating and maintaining this group and in struggling to create a website

that could stand alone and do its own rhetorical work.

BACKGROUND

The Public Sphere and Counterpublics

Habermas’ idea of the liberal bourgeois public sphere has been subject to much

critique. Nancy Fraser, Michael Warner, Rita Felski, and Gerard Hauser have all pushed

for a conception of multiple publics over Habermas’ single public sphere. These multiple

publics can also be what Fraser calls subaltern counterpublics— “parallel discourse

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arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate

counterdiscourses” (67). Fraser says these counterpublics function in two different ways:

as “spaces of withdrawal and regroupment” and as “training grounds for agitational

activities directed toward wider publics” (68). Warner, however, criticizes Fraser’s

description of what these counterpublics do as basically “Habermas’ rational-critical

publics” but “with the word ‘oppositional’ inserted” (118). He suggests that certain

groups such as “U.S. Christian fundamentalism,” “youth culture,” or “artistic

bohemianism” could potentially also fit into Fraser’s description of subaltern

counterpublics because they are oppositional to other publics. But do counterpublics

simply exist as such because they say they are against a dominant public, then? Warner

says no, that “A counterpublic maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of

its subordinate status” (119). So members of “youth culture” for example might be

“subaltern” but not a counterpublic. Then, what about this “counter?”

Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer take up this question of where to locate the

“counter” in counterpublics in their introduction to Counterpublics and the State. They

suggest that what makes these counterpublics “counter” is “the identity of the persons

who articulate oppositional discourse,” (8) but then they reevaluate this claim and say

that to focus on identity would “overlook these peoples’ mundane or hegemonically

complicit activities” (9). After a few other attempts at locating the “counter,” Asen and

Brouwer suggest that there are too many different definitions of “counter” and of

“public” and they can form in different ways and become different things. I agree that

“counterpublic” can mean different things in different contexts, but Warner’s definition

and distinction between “subaltern” and “counterpublic” makes a lot of sense, especially

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in relation to WTF Spokefolk—which I think is a counterpublic because of its

relationship to the public of bike culture at large and even its relationship with other

groups like Women & Bicycles. For the purposes of this paper, I’ll be relying on

Warner’s distinction between subaltern and counterpublic because it matches with what

I’ve observed. Members of Spokefolk have joined it with—and often because—of an

awareness of their status as subordinate in bike spaces and bike culture. Bike culture is

probably a counterpublic also because it stands in opposition and is usually subordinate

to what we might call “car culture,” but which is actually part of a larger dominate public.

These nested counterpublics recall Gerard Hauser’s idea of a rhetorical, reticulate public

sphere (57-81)—or the metaphor of the network or rhizome that Asen and Brouwer

suggest in the introduction to their more recent book, Public Modalities (1-23).

So what does this mean in terms of studying WTF Spokefolk DC? Thinking of

Spokefolk as a counterpublic not only gives us a way of self-identifying, but it also

means that how we operate as a training ground for instilling rhetorical agency is a

valuable project in public rhetoric.

Projects in Public Rhetoric

The connection I made between public rhetoric and the forming of WTF

Spokefolk is no doubt indebted to the tradition within rhetoric and composition of

engaging with social concerns and doing so, increasingly, outside of the classroom and

the campus and in local publics (Alexander and Jarratt, Flower, Sheridan et al.). In the

last few decades, the work of ethnography and community literacy studies has gotten a

lot more attention—combining the social and public turns in a way that expands the field.

More recently, in The Public Work of Rhetoric, scholars John Ackerman and David

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Coogan argue, “rhetoric can also benefit from community partnerships premised on a

negotiated search for the common good—from a collective labor to shape the future

through rhetoric in ways that are mutually empowering and socially responsible” (2).

Their book contains many examples of these partnerships. Additionally, Jonathan

Alexander and Susan Jarratt pick up on Ackerman and Coogan’s work in their essay

“Rhetorical Education and Student Activism,” claiming that Ackerman and Coogan’s

argument for “doing rhetoric ‘out there’” as giving rhetoricians “‘a more grounded

conception of public need’” applies to activism as well (527). While all public rhetoric is

not activism, Alexander and Jarratt’s investigation into the rhetorical education of a

group of student activists does give us some insight into the ways students educate

themselves and each other through activism in extracurricular ways.

Another book that makes this move to connect with local publics—in what could

also be considered a form of activism—is Linda Flower’s Community Literacy and the

Rhetoric of Public Engagement. In it, Flower details her experiences working with the

Community Literacy Center (CLC)—a partnership between a local nonprofit and

Carnegie Melon University— and her attempts to define and redefine ideas of community

literacy, rhetorical engagement, intercultural inquiry, rhetorical agency and situated

knowledge, among others. These concepts are developed and enriched through her

experience at the CLC in a way that could not have happened inside academe.

What’s interesting about all of these accounts, however, is not just their focus

beyond the university, but that they detail the public rhetorical education of groups of

(usually marginalized) others. In the textbook, Fieldworking: Reading and Writing

Research, authors Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater detail the process

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of doing ethnography and discuss the differences between writing from an outsider’s

perspective versus an insider’s perspective. They use the anthropologic terms “emic” and

“etic” to refer to insider and outsider respectively and say that it’s important for an

ethnographer to have both perspectives (14). While public rhetoric is not only concerned

with ethnography, my perspective as an insider in this counterpublic gives me a way of

looking at it that other approaches might lack. I’m not merely going into a marginalized

community and trying to help them by offering my rhetorical skills—I’m taking the skills

I’ve learned in graduate school and applying them to a public I’m already active in and

therefore making an argument not just for a public rhetoric and rhetorical education, but

for a personal connection with it. Still, as Flower explains, “one uses the role of student,

mentor, teacher, research, or activist to move beyond the academy and form working

relationships across differences of race, class, culture, gender, age, status or discourse”

(3). While I’m part of some of the same marginalized groups as other Spokefolk, I’m not

a part of others—and to make it successful, I’ve got to rhetorically engage with these

others, which is something that I’ve struggled with from the beginning. I’ve been aware

of the fact that most of the people in the group are white and many are gender normative,

and yet our goal is to be welcoming to people of color and trans or gender non

conforming folks—as well as people who may not be able to afford a bicycle. One way

I’ve tried to deal with this is by opening up the group more and more—trying to make

sure the places we hand out fliers are just the gentrified coffee shops and making sure to

have meetups in different locations. I’ve had to relinquish some control and give

everyone a space for voicing what they would like to see the group do. It is also

important to acknowledge, however, that my insider perspective of the group is a

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potential conflict of interests that could make it harder for me to address either a larger

cycling public or other counterpublics.

Technofeminist Rhetorical Agency

This project is also a project in feminist rhetoric—I’m deliberately focusing on a

group that is marginalized because of gender and giving it a voice in contemporary

scholarship—and a project in the rhetoric of technology because of the group’s focus on

bicycles. In her book, Claiming the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in

Ninetheenth Century America, Sarah Hallenbeck joins the voices of many feminist

scholars in rhetorical historiography to call attention to the communication strategies

used by women in scientific and/or technological activities—which she says is lacking.

Hallenbeck explains that by detailing the many ways women used rhetoric to influence

the design of the early bicycle, she’s “complicating dominant assumptions about

women’s historic lack of access to or participation in technological innovation” (xiv).

This complication of dominant assumptions is something I’m doing in a more

contemporary fashion by looking at what is going on within my own counterpublic.

While Spokefolk members are not directly influencing the design of the bicycle, we are

becoming attuned to what Hallenbeck calls “the material and symbolic shape” (172) that

the bicycle can take. We do this by educating each other in bicycle knowledge—

mechanical and social—swapping terminology, techniques, and stories about our

experiences as people who are not the typical cis-male cyclist. We empower each other to

be able to ask questions like, “What makes this a women’s-specific bike?” and “What

gender norms are being enforced by this design?”

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In her conclusion, Hallenback argues that while “exciting feminist user

engagement is obviously well under way, feminist rhetoricians […] might play a role in

making this work more visible and self-conscious” and that they might do this by

promoting “a technofeminist rhetorical agency” (172). She describes a technofeminist

rhetorical agent as someone who rejects the idea that technology comes to her in any

“fixed” or complete form that is out of her control and instead understands that her

interactions with technology can and will change it. This technofeminist rhetorical agent

also “understands her interactions with technology as helping maintain, complicate, or

contest dominant social norms, gendered and otherwise” (172). Last, Hallenbeck’s agent

is a “tinkerer” who has agency as a user of technology. She argues that “when we do not

think of ourselves as potential innovators of the mundane objects with which we interact,

we become complicit in the maintenance of hegemonic power relations, gendered and

otherwise” (174). By adapting a DYI attitude toward bicycle maintenance alongside a

commitment to combating sexism and unhealthy gender dynamics in bike culture and

spaces, this is exactly what we do as WTF Spokefolk of DC.

METHODS

Without my knowledge of it, the methods I’ve used in creating Spokefolk and in

working on this capstone project seem to have been influenced by an understanding of

rhetoric that has gained traction in the last ten years or so. This occurred to me after

reading “The Work of Rhetoric in the Common Places,” in which Jeff Graybill calls for a

rhetorical methodology that “facilitates the practice of rhetoric” (247). His piece is

concerned with rhetorical work or “doing rhetoric” and he only considers ideas to be

“rhetorical ideas” when they “result in methods and practice” (257). This focus on

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practice is in keeping with the tradition of rhetoric as an art and performance rather than a

theory of interpretation and provides my project with a lens through which to work. He

offers new rhetorical “devices” (instead of ideas) instead of the old ideas of invention,

arrangement, etc. These devices are: detection, rendering, assembly, calculation, and

communication and can be used in any order or all at once or be circled back to. (257).

Detection

Grabill says “the devices of detection are research and inquiry methods” and that they are

“focused on identifying shared concerns and people and things in relation to those

concerns” (258). After my initial backyard workshop, I spent many hours on the internet,

researching local bike clubs, workshops, coops, and stores. I also researched women and

trans or women, trans, and femme cycling clubs nationally and internationally—noting

the many shared concerns, people, and things that emerged. What my friends had initially

been telling me seemed to be true—there wasn’t a very good space for queer women and

trans folks to get together and build community in DC, but it was happening in other

places to a certain degree. However, even on a national scale most of the

women/trans/femme events are just workshops hosted by a bicycle coop or a riding club.

There are no other groups that I’m aware of that are committed to teaching each other

mechanical knowledge as well as having other social activities and rides. So the

rhetorical problem that I had first intuited was in fact backed up by my research.

Assembly

Grabill also says he is “focused on people and problems” (256) and argues that

“The work of rhetoric is to assemble a group or a public around a matter of concern and

to care for that assembly” (258). Months after I began Spokefolk, I read that line from

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Grabill and realized that that was exactly what my project was about: assembling a we

and caring for it. The audience or in this case participants in Spokefolk was already out

there and could arguably already be a part of a WTF subaltern counterpublic, but I found

a way to unite them around this common experience of cycling and gender and therefore

helped them discover their own rhetorical agency as a group. Because, as Grabill says,

“without groups, there is no rhetorical agency” (258). And, while Grabill’s assembly is

most directly related to my assembling of the WTF Spokefolk, the same concept applies

to my assembling of an audience for my website—of course people who are outside of

my ideal audience (both in Spokefolk and for the website) may still encounter it and

appreciate it (or not), but I’ve assembled a we and am caring for it by continually

reinforcing the experiences of that “we.” Some of the different methods I’ve used for

assembling my “we” have been to vary the types of events we have. They are not all

classes or workshops—there are happy hours and crafts nights as well as an upcoming

storytelling night, which brings me to the next device I’m using.

Rendering

According to Grabill, “rhetoric must make accounts, and we do so by following

activity and the people and things associated with that activity. One of the primary

responsibilities of a rhetorician in any assembly is to render accounts” (258). One of the

goals of my website is to tell the stories of WTF cyclists through video interviews and

I’m trying to do so in a way that is basically following their activities and associations

and drawing it all together. The interviews are rendering individual accounts of course,

but I’m also tying these accounts together in a larger narrative—thus rendering a group

account of what it means to be a WTF cyclist in DC or maybe elsewhere.

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Calculation

Grabill’s device of calculation is about knowing “if our rhetorical work has impact,

value, oomph” (258). He says we need to calculate if our problem or issue really exists,

whether we have an actual assembly and if it’s doing the work we want it to do. Based on

feedback from people in my group and outside of it, as well as the research I mentioned

under “detection,” I’m pretty sure that this issue is in fact an issue. The way I’m

calculating it is both data-driven (charts showing percentages of women’s cycling events

versus women/trans/femme events) as well as through rendering. In terms of measuring

my assembly, other than keeping track of attendance at our events, I’ve interviewed

people with very different cycling backgrounds about the group—to try and determine

whether we are really instilling any sort of rhetorical agency in them or not. So far, I

haven’t spoken with enough people to be able to tell, but I’ve observed higher levels in

confidence of those people who’ve continued to come to our events. Additionally, in

terms of the website I’m building, it will be hard to measure the rhetorical velocity it has.

Will people who view it end up joining one of the groups I mention? Will they ride their

bikes more? Will they start their own group? These are not things I can calculate—

making this device perhaps the most difficult of the bunch in terms of my project.

Communication

This is the vaguest device that Grabill mentions and he never really does define it

exactly, but says that all the other devices need it in some way. And he is right, of course.

How I communicate with my group is part of how I assemble them (us), how I render

their stories, etc. Perhaps the most difficult communication task I have, however,

involves the rhetorical choices I make in designing my website. How can I communicate

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to such a wide audience the importance of groups like Spokefolk? Different people need

to be convinced in different ways—how can I communicate in a way that will have some

sort of universal appeal while also specifically targeting women, trans, and femme folks

as well as cyclists? What I’m focusing on doing is having such a variety of media and

subtle and not so subtle arguments that while not everything will convince every viewer,

there will be something to convince everyone.

Questions:

Do I need to more fully detail the development of my group and the decisions I made?

Should I include some of my observations and interviews? (They don’t seem that

relevant, but maybe they are?). Is all of this background relevant and necessary? Do I

need more about my website and decisions there? Do I need something about who I’m

interviewing and why, for example? Like, how much should I take the time to explain my

website versus talk about the theories behind it? Does this type of paper need a thesis?

What is my thesis?!

CONCLUSION

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Works Cited

Ackerman, John M., and Coogan, David J., eds. “Introduction: The Space to Work in

Public Life.” The Public Work of Rhetoric: Citizen-Scholars and Civic

Engagement. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2013.

Alexander, Jonathan and Susan Jarratt. “Rhetorical Education and Student Activism.”

College English vol. 76, number 6, July 2014, pp. 525-44.

Asen, Robert, and Daniel C. Brouwer. “Introduction,” Public Modalities: Rhetoric,

Culture, Media, and the Shape of Public Life, University of Alabama Press,

Tuscaloosa, 2010.

Asen, Robert, and Daniel C. Brouwer. “Introduction.” Counterpublics and the State.

Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001.

Sunstein, Bonnie S., and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. Fieldworking: Reading and Writing

Research. Boston, Bedford/St. Martins, 2012.

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Flower, Linda. Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement. Southern

Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2008.

Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of

Existing Democracy.” Social Text, no. 25/26, 1990, pp. 56–80.

doi:10.2307/466240.

Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres,

University of South Carolina, Columbia, 1999.

Grabill, Jeff. “The Work of Rhetoric in the Common Places: An Essay on Rhetorical

Methodology.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory. no. 34(1-2), 2014, pp. 247-267.

Hallenbeck, Sarah. Claiming the Bicycle: Women, Rhetoric, and Technology in

Nineteenth-Century America. Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press,

2016.

Sheridan, David M. et al. “Kairos and the Public Sphere.” The Available Means of

Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric.

Anderson, SC, Parlor Press, 2012.

Sheridan, David M. et al. “Introduction.” The Available Means of

Persuasion: Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric.

Anderson, SC, Parlor Press, 2012.

Szczepanski, Carolyn. “More Men, Fewer Women Riding?” League of American

Bicyclists, 11 Sept. 2013, bikeleague.org/content/more-men-fewer-women-riding.

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York, Zone Books, 2002.

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