Pregnancy, Motherhood And/as/or Dissent: The Soviet Micro-rhetorics of Gender
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-13-2021
Department
Department of Humanities
Abstract
Scholarship on the rhetoric of reproduction, childbirth, and motherhood has mostly focused on a U.S. context. Drawing on oral histories that we collected from a small group of Estonian women who gave birth during the Soviet occupation of Estonia, we argue that women’s experiences of childbirth in Soviet maternity hospitals and during the postpartum period can be interpreted as micro-rhetorical interactions through which arguments about the worth or value of a particular identity are communicated implicitly and intangibly. The gendered nature of these micro-rhetorical interactions helps to explain the often observed-upon gap between the official Soviet rhetoric of gender equality and the persistently patriarchal nature of Soviet society. Ultimately, we argue that examining the rhetoric of pregnancy and childbirth in an authoritarian political context also necessitates rethinking the functions of and possibilities for rhetorical agency.
Publication Title
Rhetoric Review
Recommended Citation
Annuk, E.,
&
Seigel, M.
(2021).
Pregnancy, Motherhood And/as/or Dissent: The Soviet Micro-rhetorics of Gender.
Rhetoric Review,
39(4), 502-521.
http://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2020.1805575
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/14567
Publisher's Statement
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2020.1805575