Absence of the rhetorical feminine from our Western tradition is an ideological, theoretical problem whose consequences manifest in material, practical ways that affect how we teach writing. This dissertation, the first hybrid manuscript of its kind at Ohio University, examines relationships between mythos, logos, and the eikon (icon) in light of ancient rhetorics that depict powerful feminine entities and woman rhetors engaging in public, rhetorical performativity. They suggest our rhetorical origins may be as visual as textual. But the feminine authority ancient rhetorics convey is diminished, masculinized, and resignified in the West through the social construction of masculinized L/logos. As a result, once powerful feminine rhetorics disappear from our rhetorical tradition. I question the rhetorical feminine’s absence in light of images that show woman rhetors engaging in deliberative, epideictic, and forensic performativity long before Aristotle taxonomizes these terms. I argue that rhetorical and religious authorities historically entwine through masculinized L/logos and the institutionalization of what I call patri-theogony--a blend of sacred and secular patriarchal ideology that custom and laws enforce which coincides with the supposed mythos-to-logos cultural shift--that supports the inception of a masculinized rhetoric. Lasting academic consequences result: feminine authority is rendered invisible, affecting our discipline, our language, and our entire social order.
For example, feminization of composition follows from masculinization of rhetoric in the structure of masculinized L/logos. Rhetorical inequity between women and men places what Robert Connors calls “feminized” writing faculty in positions of responsibility without authority. In these positions, feminized writing faculty enact what I call the trope of the schoolmarm: disempowered authority figures, “mythologized mother-teachers” separated from once powerful rhetorical feminine roots, they practice current traditional pedagogy as a compensatory strategy for coping with overworkloads. In this way, traditional college writing classrooms reflect the structure of masculinized L/logos and suppress the rhetorical feminine. Rhetorical performativity combined with writing faculty overload suppresses feminized writing faculty’s dialogue with students and supports silencing of the rhetorical feminine. Instead of engaging students in conversation about their ideas, overloaded schoolmarms echo masculinized L/logos in correctness-focused, “God/truth voice” (Elbow) comments that discourage revision and maintain rhetoric of distance between dominant, masculinized rhetoric and submissive, feminized composition. Likewise, epistemic inequity between visual and verbal rhetorics follows from masculinization of the word and feminization of the image, subordinating image to word in the making of new knowledge. Yet visual rhetoric from antiquity through modernity depicts Rhetorike as a formidable, feminine, linguistic warrior-hero that contests this paradigm. Renegotiating this ideological and material dissonance requires ideological, material re(image)ining.
I claim that the icon is the site where the generative essence mythos and logos share overlap. My dissertation integrates icons of rhetorical feminine authority, blending visual rhetoric with the(a)logy in a hybrid text to re(image)ine and reinscribe the rhetorical feminine in masculinized L/logos, creating a God/Ess L/logos that renegotiates visual-verbal boundaries. I suggest that our rhetorical origins may be as pictorial as textual, our rhetoric and composition is performative, and our visions of rhetorical authority should be androgynous and polymorphic. These reconceptions open new possibilities for the teaching and learning of writing.