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Rhetoric(s) of rupture

Rallin, Aneil

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1999, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.

Make the text tremble, make it speak. I pit things against each other, I juxtapose. He sits to write but the words won't emerge. You want to avoid thinking of queer desire as a variation on the theme of universal love. In the spillages of the text is an argument perhaps against the progression of arguments. His heaving tongue cannot dislodge the burden of history, of memory, desire, of language. She tells him, you do not have to destroy your bhoots, respect the demons that haunt you. Texting bodies, I witness, I describe, I testify, I translate. Risks excite him. I am four maybe. I watch a man undress. I long to reach out and touch his pubic hair. She wants her acts of writing to rupture, to break the logic of dominance. You must teach so that fear and anger, rage and love may emerge. A fantasy. Effeminates of the world unite. The question of rights is distinct from feeling a sense of belonging. Whose blood is on my tongue? Can I rid my tongue of imperialism, my language of its bloodied history, its bloodied past? Risky writing enacts its own rhetoric. The risk shapes the rhetoric. They imagine the productive liberation that comes with writing for a blatant disregard for--or, even a scathing memory of-those who disagree with them. I want you to write words on my body. Resist institutional authority and institutional modes of structuring, of logic. Who is the you who writes? You ask your lover to strip and paddle your already stripped body. You are having an affair with language. Your body obsesses on language, is addicted to language. You desire the love of language. Institutions of learning model the state. They are built on inequities and the insatiability of those who have the power to hang on to it. Disrupt language that excludes, rupture language that oppresses. You process life through written language. Interrogate language, question its limits, its screens. A writer should dare to imagine. We are going to make you tremble, "hetero" and "homo" swine.

Andrea Lunsford (Advisor)
Jacqueline Jones Royster (Committee Member)
Debra Moddelmog (Committee Member)
Valerie Lee (Committee Member)
177 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rallin, A. (1999). Rhetoric(s) of rupture [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1287411614

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rallin, Aneil. Rhetoric(s) of rupture. 1999. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1287411614.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rallin, Aneil. "Rhetoric(s) of rupture." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 1999. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1287411614

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)