Activist Rhetoric in Transnational Cyber-Public Spaces: Toward a Comparative Materialist Approach

Abstract

This essay suggests one way of further pushing the methodological boundaries in the study of transnational cyber-public activist rhetoric, which is to complement a new materialist approach with materialist theories rooted in local rhetorical traditions, especially those in non-Western rhetorics. To this end, the author develops a framework named a comparative materialist approach that dynamically recontextualizes the rhetorically charged material actant as it emerges, circulates, transforms, activates the public, and assembles bodies across national, geopolitical, technological, and rhetorical borders. The author then illustrates the comparative materialist approach through a case study of the 2018 anti-Dolce & Gabbana campaign through the lens of “shi”—a rhetorical concept of material propensity originated in different schools of thought during the Warring States period in China.