7/24/2019 CFP Precarious Rhetorics

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recarityhas become a key concept in scholarly work devoted to the study of the a!ective, rela"tional, and material conditions and structuring logics of inequality. It is an explanatory concept at

work across scholarship attending to labor, migration, biopolitics, securitization, global and settler"

state governance, economies of war and violence, vulnerability, di!erentiated risk, poverty, debility, dispos"

session, and environmental degradation. Scholars across a range of fields employ precarity to understand

and analyze politically induced condition#s$in which certain populations su!er from failing social and eco"

nomic networks of support and become di!erentially exposed to injury, violence, and death %Butler 2009,

35&.

This collection couples materialist and rhetorical analytic frameworks with interdisciplinary understandings

of precarity, thereby a!ording critical attention to how people, environments, and things structurally condi"

tion de/valuation and the slow death" of particular peoples and populations %Berlant, 2007; Puar, 2010;

Cacho, 2012&. We are particularly interested in cross"disciplinary contributions that emphasize a materialist"rhetorical approach while also drawing on insights from scholars working in feminist and transnational

feminist studies, women of color feminisms, a!ect studies, critical disability studies, critical race studies,

medical humanities, sexuality studies, queer migration studies, human rights and humanitarian studies, hu"

man and cultural geography, environmental studies, Native American and indigenous studies, animal studies,

ethnic studies, among others.

We are interested in contributions that draw on materialist economic frameworks and engage critically with

scholarship in new materialisms. New materialisms posits that all things'human, non"human, and

extrahuman'intra"act to form the very conditions in and through which human subjects are incorporated

into systems of value %Riedner & Mahoney 2008, 10&. Rhetorical scholarship in new materialisms takes seri"

ously implications for how elements of a rhetorical situation bleed %Edbauer"Rice&. Exploring and analyzing

precarious rhetorics through the lens of materiality requires attunement %Rickert&to material elements,conditions, and vibrant matter that make possible human and non"human action and interaction.

Chapters inPrecarious Rhetoricswill model rhetorical analysis as a methodology %but might also employ spe"

cific qualitative and/or empirical methods&for elucidating %i&the institutional and material"discursive machi"

nations of precarity, and/or %ii&activists strategic, material"discursive mobilizations as forms of political re"

sistance to precarious conditions. This collection will also feature chapters that explore precarious rhetorics

in practice"oriented fields such as medicine, conflict resolution, public policy, and science'fields where the

concept of precarity is already in use but might be marshaled with di!erently critical and transformative

purchase.

CFP: Precarious RhetoricsCo!edited by Wendy S. Hesford, Adela C. Licona, Christa Teston

P

Wendy S. Hesford

Adela C. Licona

Christa Teston

We welcome contributions with U.S., global, international, and transnational foci, and invite inquiries that, among more, mobilize

theories of precarity to...

enhance rhetorical inquiry into structured and structuring inequalities,

understand the de/humanizing rhetorics of il/legality,

challenge or enhance rhetorical approaches to materiality,

highlight how activists and social actors mobilize when resisting social"symbolic injustices %e.g., #BlackLiveMatter; die"in

demonstrations; #ayotzinapa&,

animate anew classical and contemporary constructs in rhetorical theory %e.g., kairos; metis; techne&,

influence how scholars and the biomedical industrial complex understand the body, health, and technology,

challenge how bodies and populations are managed by settler states, the prison industrial complex, border militarization and

securitization, and/or the cradle to prison pipeline,

critique green technologies, clean oil, and corporatized notions of sustainability %e.g. Monsanto&,

understand and critique the displacement and disappearance of vulnerable communities %both human and non"human&due to

human activity and/or environmental racism,

understand statelessness and migrant crises,

critique material"discursive dimensions of economic instability and financialization %e.g., student/debt crises; market e!ects;

bank bailouts; austerity measures&.

Deadline for 250"word chapter abstracts and short bio is February 1, 2016. Editors will review abstracts and invite full chapters

%8,000"12,000 words, including endnotes and references&to be submitted byJuly 1, 2016. All submissions should be in MS Word

format and sent to,

Wendy S. Hesford | hesford.1@osu.edu

mailto:hesford.1@osu.edumailto:hesford.1@osu.edumailto:hesford.1@osu.edumailto:hesford.1@osu.edu