Breaking Immigration Norms in the Age of COVID-19

Journal #25 from Media Rise's Quarantined Across Borders Collection by Noor Ghazal Aswad. From England, UK. Quarantined in Memphis, Tennessee, United States.I reflect on the shifting nature of how refugees are rhetorically constituted in the disjunctive world of the contagion, intertwined with my own musings on my doctoral journey as a British-Syrian immigrant. I argue that the pandemic has made evident the tenuousness and inherent fungibility of neoliberal immigration frameworks.Media Rise Publications. Quarantined Across Borders Collection. Edited by Dr. Srividya "Srivi" Ramasubramanian

Breaking Immigration Norms in the Age of COVID-19

Journal #25 from Media Rise's Quarantined Across Borders Collection by Noor Ghazal Aswad. From England, UK. Quarantined in Memphis, Tennessee, United States.I reflect on the shifting nature of how refugees are rhetorically constituted in the disjunctive world of the contagion, intertwined with my own musings on my doctoral journey as a British-Syrian immigrant. I argue that the pandemic has made evident the tenuousness and inherent fungibility of neoliberal immigration frameworks.Media Rise Publications. Quarantined Across Borders Collection. Edited by Dr. Srividya "Srivi" Ramasubramanian

Radical Rhetoric and The Syrian Revolution: Toward a Telos of Solidarity

Transnational rhetorical scholarship has yet to enact solidarity with the subaltern. “Inclusionary” efforts have actively excluded what I term the “radical subject,” the subject revolting against repressive hegemonic forces to achieve liberatory change in society. As an intervention, this dissertation conceptualizes the Syrian revolution as a rhetorical performance which enacts a theory of its own agency and possibilities, an expression of a liberatory moment where radical subjects rose from under an authoritarian regime’s historic rule. Within this rhetorical performance, the radical subject serves as the chief protagonist, a subject whose rhetoric is informative of both practice and theory. The Syrian revolution is a litmus test of our ability to stand in solidarity with radical subjects and which defines the stakes for later movements. My research objectives therefore are: (1) to address the Syrian revolution as a rhetorical performance, and by extension, examine radical rhetoric as practice (Rhetorica Utens); and (2) to put forth radical rhetoric as theory (Rhetorica Docens). Here, I propose radical rhetoric as a blueprint of rhetorical practice for how to resolve controversies surrounding transnational social movements which fall into the “confrontation between two world-views.” Radical rhetoric realizes the wisdom in placing the radical subject as the starting point in inquiry in contested spaces where negotiation over meaning is ongoing. It acknowledges the radical subject’s testimony as born of the epistemic relevance of social location, the boundedness of knowledge, and latent credibility. As a theoretical rhetorical framework, radical rhetoric arouses the possibility of solidarity with those in revolutionary liberatory struggle

Redemptive exclusion: A case study of Nikki Haley\u27s rhetoric on Syrian refugees

This essay identifies and explicates a key rhetorical form- redemptive exclusion -underlying former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley\u27s efforts to defend barring Syrian refugees from American soil. Through a reliance on ethotic prolepsis, the rhetorical form of redemptive exclusion enables the creation of a transcendent perspective that reconciles seemingly opposite contemporary cultural and political rhetorics: xenophobic discourses of exclusion become coarticulated with the mythic promise of an America open to all. We show how Haley\u27s rhetoric combines antithetical gestures of inclusion and exclusion by interweaving synecdochic narratives of her own immigrant history; hyperbolic narratives of American benevolence toward immigrants; and stereotypical narratives of terrorist identity that preempt the acceptance of Syrian refugees as even potentially American. We argue that Haley converts the rejection of Syrian refugees from American soil into an opportunity for constraining and qualifying the mythic ideal of the United States as an historical beacon for immigrants around the globe. In the conclusion, we suggest that a close study of how redemptive exclusion takes life in Haley\u27s discourse offers more general lessons about the rhetorical and ideological character of controversies over U.S. immigration policy

She Embodied: A Materialized Collective

This collaboratively written piece materializes the collective experiences of 14 students and an instructor in a graduate-level feminist research methods class in the United States. Instead of writing a traditional seminar paper, the class decided to continue our weekly discussions, during which we wrestled with both theory and practice, in text in a final paper. It just seemed like the best way to end our time together. In so doing, the she embodied collective furthers feminist writing practices that embrace uneasy collectives of varying viewpoints. This particular collective acknowledges our she, but recognizes, listens to, and celebrates all the powerful pronouns that create a collective. The collective offers a brief introduction and lengthy appendix to situate the piece. We do not adhere to a singular feminism in the piece. Consequently, our collective is a way of doing unity differently, of attending to and residing with the frictional thought within feminisms and finding that frictional thought as generative. We invite readers to join our collective, to think together across differences without reducing those differences to similarities