Saying and Unsaying: Ekphrasis and Apophasis as Feminist Rhetorical Strategies #19154
This roundtable explores how feminist authors have used both ekphrasis and apophasis to question the interrelations of gender, race, class, and socio-economic and political power; and also, to displace traditional, outmoded beliefs, and inherited but dysfunctional historical narratives. Rhetorically, ekphrasis is defined as vivid, verbal description, or as verbal representation of visual art, or as canonical literature re-envisioned to fit new narratives. Apophasis refers broadly to denial, repudiation, or negation, and narrowly to a kind of irony in which what on the surface appears to be the case differs radically from what is actually the case.