What do rhetorics, both those of the past and those circulating in the present, have to teach us about overcoming impediments to democratic participation? Questions like these are explored prominently by Jonathan Alexander, Susan C. Jarratt, and Nancy Welch (2018), who extend the disruptive capacities of unruliness as rhetorical tactic in their edited collection Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics. It’s no new observation that activists wishing to disrupt or resist accepted, status-quo systems must frequently turn to practices that are deemed unauthorized, unsanctioned, and unruly by the institutions empowered to publicly define what is deemed permissible in a specific forum or society.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric