Abstract
From the late 1860s through the mid-1870s, woman suffrage activists developed an ingenious legal argument, claiming that the U.S. Constitution already enfranchised women citizens. The argument, first articulated by St. Louis activists Virginia and Francis Minor, precipitated rhetorical performances by movement activists on public platforms and in polling places, and the Minors pursued their line of reasoning to the Supreme Court. The Minors' arguments enacted a hermeneutic practice that venerated foundational texts while at the same time subverting their conventional meanings. The rhetorical figure of the gender-neutral, race-neutral citizen provided a basis for imagining a new political subjectivity for women. In the infamous Minor v. Happersett decision of 1875, however, the Court formally dissociated citizenship from voting rights. This analysis of the Minors' rhetoric illustrates the capacity of argument that "failed" in law to invigorate cultural movements, assisting in the production of new ways of imagining political selves and performing political identities.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 375-402 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Quarterly Journal of Speech |
Volume | 93 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2007 |
Funding
This systematic review was funded by the Deputy Vice‐Chancellor Indigenous Strategy and Services at The University of Sydney. Such a review is needed to inform any proposed curriculum renewal process in the future and contributes a basis for accountability and assurance of the standards of teaching and learning experiences in all dental faculty programs.
Keywords
- Citizenship
- Constitutional law
- Hermeneutics
- Invention
- Woman Suffrage
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Language and Linguistics
- Education