Performing (the Art of) Feminism

The most interesting aspect of this exploratory to me was how much our project changed from the first draft. Angela and I picked to pursue the route of using an art installation to provide a general overarching theme of feminism throughout the readings. To do this, we first focused on the major definitions in all four of the readings: feminism, invention, democracy and kairos. After we presented the draft of our project, we were given many helpful suggestions as to how we should focus our project, and in the end, we ended up making our “performative” art installation as a place to post “performative feminism.”

Feminism in and of itself is a very broad term with many different aspects and scales, but from the readings, we concluded that feminism is a community that is “united by a set of [three] basic principles: equality, immanent value, and self-determination” (Foss and Griffin 4). Foss and Griffin’s overarching theme about an invitational rhetoric is to create a safe and non-judgmental place for individuals to able to speak in this, or any type, of community. To be able to “perform” feminism would require a space like this. In our blog, found on this link: http://exploratory4.tumblr.com/, we give examples of texts and images of how individuals have managed to perform feminism in a society that is not necessarily built upon the ideal of an invitational rhetoric. Overall, we choose this archive because we felt they embodied these terms while also connecting back to the overarching theme of feminism. These examples allowed us to explore, through the readings, how we constructed what being a feminist meant to us.

The other terms we defined fall into the category of this blog as well, but because of the advice we were given, we were able to find a focal point to expand on. We believed that democracy, invention and kairos are and can be applied to feminists. In terms of democracy, Hart-Davidson et al. define as such: “The purpose of rhetorica docens has always been the formation of citizens, that is, of participants in human collectives…. rhetoric formed participants in a new democratic republic struggling to become something other than [what they are now]” (Hart-Davidson et al. 127). Here, they are saying that a democracy can only be recognized if citizens within that society are able to make progress, or at least try and change the environment they are surrounded in. They also say that it is “an articulation of cultural practices that exists and subsists in the social structures we build to encourage and perpetuate it...a view of democracy that recognizes abstract social benefits as products of social relationships”, and that “...democracy requires ‘real participatory structures in which actual people, with their geographical, ethnic, gender, and occupational differences, assert their perspectives on social issues within institutions that encourage the representation of their distinct voices’” (p. 128).

So from these definitions of democracy, we assume that any act of speaking out in response to a political action or social issues, regardless discerning factors, is considered a democratic environment. When establishing a citizen or citizenship then, we hypothesize that a citizen is a figure in the democratic society that has created a group where the values that are practiced are the same. Also, we also believe that a democracy does not have be a system used only on a governmental. It can be used on a small scale; between ethnic and geographical groups, gender, etc. Feminism is a great example of this. Campbell’s article demonstrates very clearly that the first and second waves of feminism are being changed and addressed to encourage other people to become involved in the promotion for equality between genders. She defines a genre as “the discourse of any effort for social change or any movement (however defined) differs from that of any other and cannot usefully be analyzed by some general template” (Campbell 139). Here, she stating that second wave feminism is not something that can be grouped into a category because she believes that each wave “will generate distinctive rhetoric[s]” (p. 139). Each of these different waves will bring about a new change, a new set of “distinct voices” that will try and improve the conditions that are surrounding that particular generation. So, the democracy being spoken for will be ever-changing.

Invention was trickier to find a concrete definition for, but we came up with the idea that invention is the process of taking into account several different opinions and ideas, and if they had an effect on an individual, it would change their views and allow them to create a broader field of thinking. Hawhee writes about kairos, and how it is a term for a “spur of the moment” decision. He mentions in the beginning of his essay that invention is a two-part, albeit conflicting perspective: “1) invention as a “process of discovery and posits a belief ‘in a preexistent, objective determining rhetorical order whose grasp by the rhetor holds the key to the success of any symbolic transaction; 2) invention as a “creative process, emphasizing a ‘generative subjectivity’ in which discursive production depends on the rhetor’s ability to produce arguments’” (Campbell 16). Though there are two different ways of looking at invention, the goal of it is to create something new, whether it be through a subjective or objective point of view. For example, democracy encourages invention by “articula[ting] cultural practices that exist and subsist in the social structures we build to encourage and perpetuate it” (Hart-Davidson et al. 128). Or, when people actively participate in a democracy, they are a citizen, and they spark change and a/an (re)invention of many different ideals, practices, values, etc.

Campbell also gives an example of invention through her rhetoric of feminism. She identifies that she “ignor[ed] those whose ethnicities and concerns were different” and she admits that if she “were writing today, [she] would incorporate issues about diversity and the rhetoric of more diverse voices into [her] analysis” (p. 142). If she were to use these more “diverse voices”, the rhetoric of feminism in her article would be different, creating an invention of a new type and form of rhetoric.  

In conclusion, performative feminism is accomplished by incorporating a combination of all of these terms. In the instances of our tumblr page, we tried to reblog acts of feminism that reflected elements of kairos, democracy and invention, all while surrounding the three values that Foss and Griffin mention: self-determination, immanent value, and equality (p. 4).