Rhetoric After Identification

Edited by David R. Gruber (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) & Jason Kalin (DePaul University)

Rhetorical identification seeks a common ground of existence in which divided individuals can mediate their differences. Perhaps, for this reason, either explicitly or implicitly, identification has become a commonplace of rhetorical theory and criticism. As Diane Davis (2010) writes, “Identification is not simply rhetoric’s most fundamental aim; it’s also and therefore rhetorical theory’s most fundamental problem” (p. 33). Any rhetoric, it seems, must pass through rhetorical identification. 

Rhetoric After Identification asks: What if rhetoric does not have to pass through rhetorical identification? What if identification and consubstantiality are not necessary for acting together? What if rhetoric's most fundamental problem is not achieving identification and consubstantiality? What if rhetoric has no fundamental aim? 

In response to numerous invocations of identification in rhetorical studies, Rhetoric After Identification plumbs identification as rhetoric's commonplace and explores the possibility that rhetoric does not require identification for social cooperation or acting together. To be sure, rhetorical theory and criticism exploring identification as the achievement of consubstantiality within dramatistic performances will continue to be important for rhetorical studies. Rather than replacing identification, thinking after identification means displacing a privileged topos to ask what radical possibilities become available for rhetoric by conjuring rhetoric's (and rhetorics of) unavailable diversities and multiplicities.

We seek chapters rooted in rhetorical theory that can extend these conversations. We are particularly interested in challenging, interdisciplinary scholarship that draws on:

• new materialisms and object-oriented ontologies;

• body studies and rhetoric of health and medicine;

• affect studies in the cognitive sciences;

• media theory and philosophy or rhetoric of technology;

• decolonial philosophies;

• critical race theory and intersectional rhetorics.

We aim to build a diverse and important collection of rhetorical theory exploring the different ways that bodies of rhetorics and rhetorics of bodies do not need to pass through identification. Each chapter, we hope, can consider a strain of rhetoric (Stormer, 2016) to explore the implications of rhetoric after identification. Rhetoric After Identification pursues bodies of multiplicity and heterogeneity, yet fully able to act, to cooperate, to admire, to invent, to love, and to body, that is, do whatever else a body can do.

To submit, please send a 400–600 word abstract to David.Gruber@UNLV.edu or jkalin@depaul.edu. Outline the contribution your chapter would make and the key sources you will be using.

Works Cited

Davis, D. (2010). Inessential solidarity: Rhetoric and foreigner relations. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Stormer, N. (2016). Rhetoric’s diverse materiality: Polythetic ontology and genealogy. Review of Communication, 16(4), 299–316.https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2016.1207359

Estimated Timeline

• Abstracts - Jan 15th

• Notice of Abstracts Accepted - Feb 1st 

• Chapters Due (6,000–8,000 words) - May 1st

• Peer Reviews Returned - Aug 1st

• Final Chapters Due - Oct 1st

Potential Press for Proposal Submission

• Penn State University Press

• University of South Carolina Press

• University of Alabama Press

• The Ohio State University Press