ABSTRACT
In both rhetoric and feminist studies, redefinitions of silence have galvanized research in listening. Rather than view listening as a passive act of reception, feminist theorists have interrogated the ways listeners both construct meaning and determine whose meanings will get heard. Feminist rhetoricians in particular have sought to understand the complex relationship among listening, ethos construction, and identity formation, especially in terms of how these processes might silence difference. Explaining her concept of rhetorical listening, Krista Ratcliffe, for example, advocates a listening that “proceed[s] from within a responsibility logic,” a “performance” that “locate[s] identification in the discursive spaces of both commonalities and differences” (204, emphasis in original). By attending to both of these, Ratcliffe offers us a methodology for building alliances even as we recognize and contend with our differences. Her definition of rhetorical listening also reminds us of Kenneth Burke’s edict: that “identification implies division” (45). To listen rhetorically, then, we must continually interrogate our processes of identification, examining how we both connect with and dis-connect from our discursive constructions of self and others.
