Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric: Searching the Negative Spaces in Histories of Rhetoric [Paperback]

Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric posits rhetoric and gynecology as sister discourses. While rhetoric has been historically concerned with the regulation of the productive male body, gynecology has been concerned with the discipline of the female reproductive body. Lydia M. McDermott examines these sister discourses by tracing key narrative moments in the development of thought about sexed bodies and about rhetorical discourse, from classical myth and natural philosophy to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decline of midwifery and the rise of scientific writing on the reproductive body. Liminal Bodies offers a metaphorical method of invention and criticism, sonogram, that emphasizes the voices and bodies that have been left on the margins of the dominant histories of rhetoric.Lydia M. McDermott is assistant professor of composition and the director of the Center for Writing and Speaking at Whitman College.

McDermotts text presents an interdisciplinary and intersectional sonogram rhetoric that works to listen as well as speak, and always transcends its own boundaries by helping to construct more eidolons (155). This approach has exciting future research implications for analyzing the ways we form rhetoric, practice scientific inquiry, and value certain bodies over others, and should be considered a valuable resource for rhetoricians and technical communicators interested in pursuits of reproductive justice. Rhetoric Review

The best audiences for Liminal Bodies are those interested in the rhetoric surrounding feminine health, either as scholars of health, of composition, or of health policy. The book will also appeal to male readers new to feminism and seeking a civil but implicating tutorial. Hopefully [there will be] a sequel to her marvelous book. International Journal of Feminist Approaches To Bioethics

This beautifully written, deeply and eclectically researched book expands the fields ofls+