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A Grammar of Consubstantiality: A Burkean Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Third-Person Identity Constitution in Science-Fiction Television DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Leslie Ann B Chambers Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2018 Dissertation Committee: Professor Nan Johnson, Advisor Professor James Fredal Professor Sean O’Sullivan Copyrighted by Leslie Ann B Chambers 2018 ii Abstract Rhetoric and feminism have historically been seen as having little to do with each other. This dissertation seeks to illuminate commonalities between rhetoric and feminism by demonstrating how Burkean identification operates as a pivotal link between the two. It argues that Burkean identification allows for an articulation of how to use the claims we make about who we are to create the kind of transformation feminism is interested in encouraging. It does so by elucidating the relationship between feminist rhetorical principles and Burkean thought through the analysis of third-person identity constitution—a three-step process through which the audience is encouraged to identify with a third-person Other. Each step of that process is demonstrated through the rhetorical analysis of science-fiction television series that use third-person identity constitution to constructively transform the perception of the third-person Other and to encourage the audience to adopt the feminist rhetorical principles that led to that changed perception. These analyses reveal the significant role Burkean identification can play in developing a constructively transformative and feminist rhetoric as well as the important tool science fiction can be for feminist rhetoric. i Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Nan Johnson, and my committee members, Dr. James Fredal and Dr. Sean O’Sullivan, for their thoughtful encouragement and patience. I would also like to thank everyone outside of my committee who has read chapters or sections of chapters (or listened to me try to explain what a chapter is supposed to be about in person or over the phone): your listening ears, encouragement, and comments have been greatly appreciated. In particular, I would like to thank Jen Michaels and Chase Bollig who did more than their share of listening and suggesting and helped push me forward when I got stuck. ii Vita 2004................................................................Maumee High School 2009 ...............................................................B.A. English, Philosophy, and Music, The University of Toledo 2011................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2011 to present ..............................................PhD Candidate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: English iii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Vita ..................................................................................................................................... iii Fields of Study ................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1 ..............................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................53 Chapter 3 ..........................................................................................................................105 Chapter 4 ..........................................................................................................................157 Chapter 5 ..........................................................................................................................193 References ........................................................................................................................207 iv Chapter 1: Introduction “Rhetoric needs identity because it can help to explain how in the claims we make about who we are we might also come to transform the world.” —Dana Anderson, Identity’s Strategy: Rhetorical Selves in Conversion (13, emphasis in the original) Andrea Lunsford and Cheryl Glen’s 2015 anthology Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and Feminism opens with the following claim: “Rhetoric. Feminism. For millennia, these words seemed to have little in common” (1, emphasis in the original). What I hope to accomplish in this dissertation is to further the important work that anthology does illuminating the emerging commonalities between rhetoric and feminism by demonstrating how Burkean identification operates as a pivotal link between the two. I argue that identification’s ability to account for how those “claims we make about who we are…can come to transform the world” allows for an articulation of how to use such claims (and how such claims have been used) to create the kind of transformation feminism is interested in encouraging. I find this to be an important task because within the academy and beyond there exist some misgivings about assuming Burkean and feminist rhetorics can be aligned. What I seek to do through this dissertation is to ease those misgivings by elucidating the relationship between feminist rhetorical principles and Burkean thought through the analysis of what I term third-person identity 1 constitution—the creation of a third-person Other in the text with whom the audience is encouraged to identify. Therefore, although this project is fundamentally concerned with theoretical issues, the chapters that follow also consist of rhetorical analysis: each chapter analyzes science-fiction television series due to their use of third-person identity constitution to constructively transform their audience’s perception of an Other from antagonistic to consubstantial and to encourage their audience to adopt the feminist rhetorical principles that led to that changed perception. Through these analyses, I hope to illuminate how the use of third-person identity constitution by these science-fiction television series demonstrates the significant role Burkean identification can play in developing a constructively transformative and feminist rhetoric as well as to illuminate the important tool science fiction can be for feminist rhetoric. Before delving into my primary texts, however, this introduction begins by exploring why such misgivings concerning Burkean thought and feminist rhetorical principles exist and attempts to resolve them—starting with demonstrating how a desire for transformation motivated Kenneth Burke and how that desire and the theories it produced align with feminist rhetorical thought. Burke, Transformation, and Feminism Much like feminist rhetoricians and theorists, Kenneth Burke developed his rhetorical theories in response to the oppression and violence he saw in the world around him. In Burke, War, Words: Rhetoricizing Dramatism (2008), M. Elizabeth Weiser contextualizes Burke’s 1945 A Grammar of Motives in that very way, tracking how 2 Burke’s desire for transformation, one of the motivating forces behind the “timeless theory” that is dramatism, operates as a “time-bound response to the war” (xvi). According to Weiser, through the work that would eventually become A Grammar of Motives, Burke sought to provide the world with a methodology with which the antipathies that motivated WWII could be transformed through transcendence. This focus on transformation through transcendence came from Burke’s understanding of his “dramatic metaphor” as “a translation model” that could lead to “greater tolerance”: he thought that “responding to others’ worldviews and their desire for permanence meant persuading them toward one’s own perspective—while being open to the possibility that one’s own pieties might be similarly changed” (21). Like much feminist thought, Burke’s conception of transcendence is grounded by a principle of risk: one must be open to other perspectives and be willing to risk changing one’s own perspective due to that openness. This more feminist construction of transcendence was possible because, unlike other theorists who have tended to focus on “opposing forces,” Burke recognized that the different perspectives that lead to transcendance do not need to be considered necessarily opposed to one another (Weiser 107). For Burke, Weiser notes, it is only once that common notion of dichotomous necessity is eliminated that multiple perspectives can be taken together and can contribute to a transcendent perspective (107).This ability to see perspective as not inherently dualistic was due to Burke’s belief that, in Weiser’s words, language “artificially” created “a dichotomous perspective” and that “it was the job of the language critic to uncover…underlying natural unity” (107). Due to that belief, Burke continuously took stances in relation to differing perspectives that, Weiser explains, “fell 3 on the bias—not simply in the middle, not finding some common ground between them in a relativistic kind of

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