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Rhetorical Vulnerability, Sophia Brauner
Rhetorical Vulnerability, Sophia Brauner
WWU Graduate School Collection
Rhetorical vulnerability is a necessary, underlying condition for rhetoric. That is, in order for rhetoric to be meaningful or even possible, we must already be vulnerable to each other. This paper frames vulnerability as a rhetorical concept different from vulnerability as a way of being, a personality trait, and a modifier of actions and behaviors. I examine how vulnerability has shown up in rhetorical scholarship as approaches to rhetoric, in relation to desire, and as embodied and affective. I close by proposing a practice of embracing vulnerability which creates capacities to differently engage identification categories and to understand spaces not …