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Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin, FEMINIST RHETORICAL THEORIES. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999; pp. x + 390, $54.95 hardcover, ISBN: 07619034161; $25.95 paperback, ISBN: 076190347X.
Karen A. Foss, Sonja K. Foss, and Cindy L. Griffin's Feminist Rhetorical Theories addresses an important niche. Provocative feminist histories of rhetoric have been published and leading communication theory textbooks feature chapters on feminist theorists. Yet there is a need for extended treatments of feminist theories of rhetoric. The potential audience for the book includes students, teachers, and scholars.
After an introductory chapter giving the authors' definitions of feminism, rhetoric, and theory, Chapter 2 provides a history of feminist scholarship in rhetoric. The remaining nine chapters are devoted to the work of Cheris Kramarae, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldtia, Mary Daly, Starhawk, Paula Gunn Allen, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Sally Miller Gearhart, and Sonia Johnson. Each chapter includes biographical information, as well as discussion of the theorist's view of the nature of the world and the rhetor, her conceptualization of the realm for rhetoric, her definition of feminism, the rhetorical options she outlines, and the transformations of theory implied by her work.
One of the book's strengths lies in the diversity of theorists featured. Foss, Foss, and Griffin assert that "there are a variety of kinds of feminists and feminisms" (p. 3), that differences of "race, ethnicity, and class, as well as sexual, spiritual, and political orientations" can help expand "perspectives on rhetoric," and that the work of women who have not "developed rhetorical theories deliberately or explicitly" but address "symbol use" can have "transformative potential for rhetorical...