From Deconstruction to (Re)construction: Moving between Rhetorical Criticism and Rhetorical Activism

• In Event: Communication Activism Scholarship: Examples from Emerging Scholars

Abstract

This presentation contributes to conversations surrounding engaged scholarship by exploring movements between rhetorical criticism and rhetorical activism. Rhetorical critics contribute to social justice by critiquing subtleties of discourse and its insidious and/or emancipatory effects. An engaged, activist stance involves using these deconstructions to construct socially just communities—a movement beyond deconstruction to (re)construction. This presentation, thus, explore questions such as what rhetorical activism looks like and what kind of knowledge it produce.

Author

• Billie Murray, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill