This dissertation argues that the critical and creative works of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, and Audre Lorde contain an implicit rhetorical theory that both questions and extends the canon of modern rhetorical thought. Morrison, hooks, and Lorde extend modern rhetorical thought by demonstrating that emotion is an undertheorized foundation of knowledge and ideology and a primary means by which subjects organize and act within their world. This dissertation also explores how the rhetoric of emotion suggested by Morrison, hooks, and Lorde calls for new pedagogies that are more able to acknowledge and theorize the affective dimensions of race relations in the United States.;Chapters one through three focus on three key rhetorical concepts: language, rhetor, and audience, respectively. These are arguably basic concepts that any rhetorical theory must develop. I explore how Morrison, hooks, and Lorde---who are themselves situated in black literary and rhetorical traditions---reinterpret these concepts through the neglected rhetorical framework of emotional appeal. In doing so, I argue, they effectively return a theory of emotion to modern rhetoric. Collectively, these first three chapters demonstrate a need for pedagogies that recognize that emotion is a primary means for teachers and students to understand and organize their worlds. They also demonstrate a need for pedagogies that recognize how affective investments in oppressive thought run far deeper than logical and ethical investments. Chapter four addresses this need in two ways. First, it describes the variety of emotional issues that arise in a classroom where students read black women writers. Second, it offers strategies for constructing a pedagogy of emotion that might begin to reschool teachers and students on an affective level.
展开▼
