Theorizing Listening as a Tool for Social Change: Andrea Dworkin’s Discourses on Listening

Authors

  • Valerie Palmer-Mehta Oakland University

Keywords:

Andrea Dworkin, listening, feminist studies

Abstract

Theorizing listening’s multifarious functions has meaningful potential for critical communication studies. I argue that our understanding of listening can be enriched by examining the discourses of the U.S. radical lesbian feminist Andrea Dworkin. Employing and extending McRae’s method of performative listening, I argue that Dworkin’s rhetoric can be read as a theory and practice of radical, caring listening that promotes social change and moves us toward collective action.

Author Biography

Valerie Palmer-Mehta, Oakland University

Valerie Palmer-Mehta is an Associate Professor and the Communication Program Director at Oakland University. Dr. Palmer-Mehta's intellectual interests sit at the intersection of Rhetorical Studies and Gender/Sexuality Studies. Her current research investigates the rhetorical/discursive strategies women employ to influence public culture and to transform intellectual traditions and everyday practices. She also analyzes the rhetorical construction of women's ways of knowing and being, as well as their methods of resistance, in the media. Her overarching research goal is to identify and assess the creative methods by which women question entrenched orthodoxies and establish new paradigms and values--and the level of resistance they receive when doing so. Her research has been published in a variety of journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; Communication, Culture & Critique; Text and Performance Quarterly; Women's Studies in Communication; QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking; and Journal of American Culture. Her work also appears in edited collections, such as Rethinking Ethos: A Feminist Ecological Approach to Rhetoric; A Companion to First Ladies; Mediated Moms: Contemporary Challenges to Motherhood; The Oprah Phenomenon; and Black Women's Intellectual Traditions. She sits on the editorial boards of Southern Communication Journal and Women's Studies in Communication.

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Published

2016-08-15

Issue

Vol. 10 (2016)

Section

Articles

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