FIVE Affective Circulation

Affective relations imply embodied relationality—a nexus of attachments where meaning moves outward and inward simultaneously. Ahmed asks: “Why are relations of power so intractable and enduring, even in the face Page 129 →of collective forms of resistance?”³ Her question is an important one. How are we to leverage affective circulation within the digital if the only means of doing so is through the very means that impedes us to do so? There were several moments of rhetorical action in this study that seemed particularly productive, moments in which differences were addressed and highlighted in ways that, if given the same kind of movement and visibility other texts received, might have altered the rhetorical landscape. But again, the question remains, how—in the face of global media and the affective charges of universality that permeate the media—can those texts achieve any kind of heightened velocity and endurance? Perhaps we need to turn our focus to the rhetor—the human body—rather than just the rhetor’s text.

While there needs to be an acknowledgment of affective circulation as a theoretical process, there also needs to be a recognition of the problematics posed by examining that process as simply something abstract. Instead, we need to consider the ways in which human intervention is always already involved in the circulation process so that we might be able to better understand how to alter and leverage that process toward productive rhetorical efficacies. We need to think of affective circulation as a kind of “affective currency.” The word “currency” implies exchange. Thus, if we think of our actions on the web in terms of circulation, if we consider ourselves affective circulators of both knowledge and emotion (because that is essentially what we do without even realizing it), then we might see our role as more active and thus more influential. We might be more apt to circulate texts beyond the moment of publication (beyond clicking “post” on Facebook and never returning to it again). As I mentioned in connection with LeCourt in chapter 1, as rhetors interested in social action, we have the opportunity to take information generated by users—information that we, as free laborers on the web, produce—and give it a different kind of value by being more engaged in where that information goes and to whom that information ultimately reaches. Yes, global media has a stronger voice and more visibility, but as mentioned earlier, our “consumption” as users matters just as much; thus, what we circulate, what we “like” on Facebook, or retweet on X, has the potential to make it into the “spotlight,” just as femen’s texts did, if collectively we work toward that goal.

This book came to be because I believe it is possible to have an ecological framework of circulation while still attending to power but doing so means understanding the body differently. Reembodying circulation means reenvisioning the role agency plays within the circulation process. Ecological scholar Marilyn Cooper has tried to address this issue of agency in her Page 130 →discussion of rhetorical responsibility. Agency for Cooper is “an emergent property of embodied individuals.”⁴ Like Gries and other new materialist scholars, Cooper attributes this kind of embodied agency to both organic and inorganic matter, though the enactment of agency differs depending on the makeup of the “matter.” The distinction between Cooper and other new materialist scholars, however, is Cooper’s belief that the effects of agency—the choices one makes—are “not free from influence from their inheritance, past experiences, or their surround.”⁵ Because of these influences, Cooper believes that rhetorical agents need to be mindful of these effects and therefore argues for a “responsible rhetorical agency.” If we fail to recognize responsibility, we fail to recognize the potentiality of rhetoric: “Responsible rhetorical agency is a matter of acknowledging and honoring the responsive nature of agency and that this is the kind of agency that supports deliberative democracy.”⁶

For Cooper, agency resides in the liminal spaces of the conscious and unconscious. “Agents,” Cooper writes, “do reflect on their actions consciously; they do have conscious intentions and goals and plans; but their agency does not arise from conscious mental acts, though consciousness does play a role. Agency instead is based in individuals’ lived knowledge that their actions are their own.”⁷ Here, Cooper is making a stark distinction between an agent and agency itself. According to her logic, I, as an organism—as a writer–rhetor—can be considered an agent, but my agency cannot be assumed because it is never predetermined. This agency emerges and is enacted in particular moments of interaction which then lead to conscious (or unconscious) choices—in this case, the choice to circulate or not circulate something. I bring up Cooper because I, too, see the need for a responsible rhetorical agency, especially when thinking about the relationship between digital circulation and the body. But as much as I align myself with Cooper’s sense of agency as responsibility for the effect of a given rhetorical ecology, I believe agency must and can be more reflective than she depicts, which is why I believe we need to start thinking about agency in relation to affect.

Affect and agency, in many ways, are inseparable. And affect is fueled by embodied processes involving sensations, memories, histories, and emotions—ultimately, the social conditions and relations in which we find ourselves. To recognize power, we cannot detach affect from the body, and thus we cannot detach agency from the body. Cooper calls on rhetorical scholars to see that “responsible rhetorical agency is a matter of acknowledging and honoring the responsive nature of agency and that this is the kind of agency that supports deliberative democracy,”⁸ but I suggest that we see Page 131 →“responsible rhetorical agency” as “a matter of acknowledging and honoring the responsive nature of [affect] and that this is the kind of agency that supports deliberative democracy.”⁹ As Chaput reminds us, “if we replace agency with affect, we tie cultural participation to the life energies that connect diversity rather than sameness.”¹⁰

In thinking about the relationship between affect and agency, I find Chaput’s most recent work on affect and market rhetorics helpful here. Affect, Chaput argues, contributes to the process of “invention” as it repositions “the ethos-pathos-logos triangulation from the symbolic onto the bodily.”¹¹ In one’s conscious awareness of and attention to affect as part of the rhetorical process and thus a form of rhetorical agency, she explains that active participation in discerning these affective moments operate as disruptive movements that reshape bodies, identities, and emotional landscapes, fostering the potential for new social relations and a new form of governance. This governance moves beyond being either innate or merely reactive to neoliberalism. Such movements open the possibility for a radically transformed world where diverse publics naturally engage in oppositional critiques. “As individuals cultivate different intuitive responses to their environments,” Chaput argues, “they revise the affect circulating through and orienting the worlds and its inhabitants.”¹² Over time, this process builds and, as a consequence, it “alters sociopolitical and cultural thresholds for economic injustices.” And “once altered,” she writes, “the unconscious attunements among individuals and their milieu open up the rhetorical field to a range of as yet unexplored possibilities.”¹³ This is the kind of affective work that I believe is possible—a kind of transformative action that begins with affect, agency, and the body.

With this in mind, I offer in the remaining pages of this book some thoughts on how those interested in the relationship between rhetoric and social change might leverage affective rhetorics for more socially just purposes. I ask, that is, what we might take away from this case study in order to pursue a study of digital circulation that illuminates the potential for transformative action rather than ideological reification. While I cannot answer this question fully, I propose that we start by embracing what I call a “rhetorical affective reflexivity.” A rhetorical affective reflexivity, I suggest, requires that the rhetor–writer–activist look not only at the text but also at their own affective actions and relationality—the embodied relationality that might be created or sustained by their circulation. A moment of rhetorical affective reflexivity, I argue, can and should be a part of circulation. This moment would require one to examine their relationship to the circulation Page 132 →of meaning—not just the content of what is circulated, but the affect that “sticks” to the content and the emotions that are invoked and felt as a result of that content’s affective “stickiness.” While in Sboui’s case these moments of rhetorical affective reflexivity never rise to the “trend-level,” such reflexivity does occur and could, with more responsive actors, achieve an affective stickiness that could eventually lead to the production of new affects and new social relations. Such a position would view the rhetorical landscape with both a critical distance and reflexive closeness.

In considering a rhetorical affective reflexivity within the bounds of this case study, we can see that amplification might offer the most possibility. Ultimately, in this case, it offered too many possibilities for us to actually digest the full scope of potential meanings at play. Velocity, and the intensified affective elements that accompany it, however, involves a kind of transparency that allows one to visibly and concretely see the rhetorical terrain. Velocity works to literally divide the rhetorical landscape into sides, making it more possible to see and examine those sectors, to acknowledge the ideologies undergirding them, and to inquire into the affective charges that continue to solidify those polarities. And endurance makes these channeled rhetorics even more streamlined and visible, as the longevity of circulation accelerates the velocity and affective elements of certain rhetorics such that certain ones ultimately “win.” In thinking about this case study from this kind of perspective—in taking a step back and noticing the shrinkage of possibility and the reduction in rhetorical arguments and meanings—one can perhaps view the rhetorical landscape with critical distance, as a meta-critical kind of reading. And such readings materialize in the last two layers of circulation. Unfortunately, these readings appear less often and in more obscure, less visibly accessible spaces than those of the mainstream media’s less critical messages.

In the second layer of circulation (velocity), for example, femen and the mainstream media’s messages are further complicated when an anonymous writer from the site Patheos (a site that addresses global conversations on religion) points out the problematic link between warfare rhetoric and rhetoric on women’s rights. She writes: “femen protesting in the name of ‘oppressed Muslim women’ resembles imperialist ideas which were invoked post–9/11 (who can forget that Bush was out to liberate women in Afghanistan?).”¹⁴ The article then links to a Jezebel article where President Bush is quoted:

“My concern of course is that the United States gets weary of being in Afghanistan and says ‘It’s not worth it, let’s leave’ and Laura and I Page 133 →believe that if that were to happen, women would suffer again,” [Bush] told van Susteren. “And we don’t believe that’s in the interest of the United States or the world to create a safe haven for terrorists and stand by and watch women’s rights be abused.”¹⁵

In Bush’s quote, the fusion of rhetorics around women’s oppression and rhetorics around terrorism and violence are persuasively appealing to some interests, particularly the West’s (read: United States) desire to increase national security and thus control and maintain geopolitical infrastructures and relations (usually involving modes of violence).¹⁶ In Bush’s words and in this anonymous writer’s critique of his words lies a cogent example of how affective circulation can both intervene in and forestall the potentialities for rhetorical action and engagement. The slippage in the feeling and content of Bush’s quote—the association between the concern for women’s safety and the depiction of Afghanistan as a site of terror and violence—leads to racial anxieties regarding Afghanistan and the people from there. And yet in a more productive instance of circulation, Bush’s same words add another layer of affect to the Patheos piece, as the author recharacterizes his quote as “imperial.” In pairing this critique alongside the critique of femen’s mixing of war rhetorics with feminist rhetorics, the author contributes a valuable argument about the use of women as subjects for neoliberal and geopolitical agendas. Moreover, this example shows us how affective circulation involves a historical accumulation of meaning—how over time, the circulation of women’s rights rhetorics has become necessarily tied to (and understood as inherently related to) rhetorics of national security and war. The Patheos author’s automatic associations between femen’s rhetorical appeals about Sboui and Bush’s rhetorical claims about Afghanistan reveal the “stickiness” in language and meaning that emerges from affective circulation. Even more interesting, though, is the link between this moment in the study and the recent events described at the end of chapter 4 regarding femen and women in Afghanistan and Iran. What this reveals is the power of endurance, the ways in which rhetorics endure, become sedimented, and ultimately archived both in the literal sense (part of a digital archive) and within our consciousnesses, as embodied rhetorics. If we are looking to create transnational alliances and bring about social change, a rhetorical affective reflexivity must focus on embodied relations across and within difference, not just any embodied relation. In many ways, this kind of rhetorical reflexive focus—the circulation of body rhetorics premised on difference—has the potential to endure too. For example, in a post entitled “Femen: How Did Page 134 →Things Go So Wrong?” blogger Maeve Kelly says of femen: “Their actions have divided opinion globally, inside and outside of Feminism (and even within this blog!).”¹⁷ She then asks, “How did Femen alienate so many? And how can we make sure we don’t do the same thing?” I include here a long excerpt from Kelly’s blog post because it demonstrates a productive response that involves a rhetorical affective reflexivity:

Now, I am loathe to criticise another woman for how she “does” feminism. As we have explored before, it is not a rule book; casting other women out of the fold is not helpful or productive. ...

Facing criticism of their actions as “racist” and “colonial” from prominent academics such as Chitra Nagarajan didn’t provoke introspection from Femen. Instead, their position on Islam appeared to broaden to all Arabs. Speaking about Ukraine’s culture of traditional marriage and children, Femen’s leader Inna Shevchenko said: “As a society we haven’t been able to eradicate our Arab mentality towards women.” Using the word “Arab” is a pejorative is essentially racist, in the same way that saying “that’s so gay!” or “stop being such a girl” perpetuates, rather than challenges, societal norms. Addressing the Muslim Women Against Femen counter-movement, she said: “Your fathers, brothers and husbands are raping and killing.” Accusing non-white men of being more likely to be rapists is not exactly new or radical either—just read To Kill a Mockingbird.

If we can learn anything from Femen, it’s that they should have attempted to open their ears to the voices of the women they were trying to help. A “White Savourist” mentality is only too easy to develop—listening and amplifying the voices of other women is the cure. Telling Muslim women that even though they say they wish to wear the hijab “in their eyes it’s written ‘help me,’” is the opposite of this—it patronises them and denies their autonomy. They are adult women making decisions, and while I do not wish to turn this article into a discussion of hijab, why do we find those decisions so hard to accept? Many feminists do things which are routed in patriarchal tradition—marriage, for one. Shaving their body hair, for another. And yet we don’t claim that they are all victims, imprisoned within tradition. Why can’t we give the same respect to hijab?

To jump into that discussion is to deviate from the point, but only slightly. The route of the problem here is that Femen are embracing some women’s right to make choices, but not all women’s. Instead of Page 135 →engaging with criticism in the spirit of mutual respect, they have gone on the defensive, claiming “sexism is a kind of racism,” as if this exonerates them and makes them incapable of committing it. This complacency to their own privilege is what has led Femen down this path, and the exact thing which we must always guard against in ourselves.

To say sexism is not a form of racism is not to say the oppressions are not intertwined; they must be fought at the same time! But we will not ever be able to do this if we dismiss and judge other women, regardless of their life choices. As long as feminists opt for a paternalistic approach to women of colour, they will be continuing to enact colonialism and alienating women who need support.¹⁸

Throughout her response, Kelly points to the universalizing rhetoric attached to femen that I discuss throughout chapter 4 and how the perpetuation of such a rhetoric perpetuates an affect premised on racist and colonialist ideologies. In addition, she enlists other feminists in a call to do what femen and the mainstream media did not do: listen and respond, rather than ignore and silence others (note her reference to MWAF). To emphasize (again) the following quote: “If we can learn anything from Femen,” she writes “it’s that they should have attempted to open their ears to the voices of the women they were trying to help. A ‘White Savourist’ mentality is only too easy to develop—listening and amplifying the voices of other women is the cure.”¹⁹ She then goes on to suggest that feminists interested in building coalitions should reflect on the way they evaluate the varied meanings embedded in “life choices,” ultimately urging them to consider the kinds of emotions that prompt their engagement and the kinds of affect that result from that engagement: “But we will not ever be able to do this if we dismiss and judge other women, regardless of their life choices.”²⁰

Although it does not receive the kind of attention that femen’s texts received, this kind of engagement—Kelly’s rhetorical affective reflexivity when reading the social relations that arose from this particular site of analysis—perhaps assures us that not all hope is lost when we consider the potentialities for circulation and transformative action on the web. In considering these implications further, and mainly the point about users taking more of an active role in affective circulation, what might have happened, for example, if certain rhetors in this study (Sboui, MWAF, or Kelly) followed where their texts went, and how those texts were picked up, recirculated, and ultimately altered for different purposes? Might the rhetorical playing field have been a different one? Perhaps it could have been. Perhaps Page 136 →collectively the push for the texts focused on difference, texts that reflexively acknowledged the problematics of circulation, could have altered the rhetorical landscape such that certain rhetors whose voices were originally elided through circulation leveraged it in a way that allowed their voices to be heard.

Feminist rhetoricians like myself—located in “the West” and thus implicated in and continuously influenced by Western ideologies—might consider more closely what this idea of collectivity means for transnational rhetorical engagement in the digital sphere. As seen in this case study, the notion of collectivity never really transpired; instead, individuals reacted quickly and immediately to prevailing arguments, aligning themselves with the most visible claims available to them (i.e., solidarity in the name of rescuing and saving Muslim women). Perhaps the kind of rhetorical work we need to begin to think about has less to do with instantly consuming texts and more to do with affectively and reflexively engaging them. As we saw in the two previous examples, there are ways to engage texts though an affective rhetorical reflexivity. In Kelly’s blog post, for example, she not only touched on femen’s elision of difference and the various lived experiences that result from those differences, but she also brought a transnational analysis to those differences—pointing out how those differences are produced through affective rhetorics of universality and thus through geopolitical discourses and globalized powers. She engaged in a reflexive approach in her reading, not only of the content circulating, but also the affect undergirding it—the why and how of circulation that made the movement of that content possible. Like Kelly, I propose that we think of rhetorical action and circulation online in terms of an embodied approach to content and the affective movement of content. In this way, engaging in a rhetorical affective reflexivity means putting forth embodied readings of texts. One might ask: who is speaking in these texts? And who is being silenced simultaneously? What is the material context of the speaker? Who is being represented in these texts? And for what purposes? How does my position and my material context influence my reading of these texts, my circulation of them? What are my reactions, feelings, and emotions toward these texts? And how do my reactions, feelings, and emotions influence and contribute to the meaning of these texts? What communities are forming around these texts and what are the ideologies undergirding them? What kinds of affect are implicit in these texts? How do these texts link, associate, divide or bring together different bodies, different contexts, and different geographical locations and spaces? And how does the movement of these texts influence or change their meaning?

Page 137 →As Grewal and Kaplan suggest, if we are to consider engaging in transnational practices, we need to “rearticulate the histories of how people in different locations and circumstances are linked. ... If Western theorists ... cannot allow for unequal, uneven, and nonsynchronous expressions of modernity in reading and interpreting cultural productions ... any possibility for solidarity between feminists and others who work within differences is obstructed.”²¹ For rhetorical studies, this kind of rearticulation—approaching digital circulation with both a critical distance and reflexive closeness—is important and necessary if we are to consider incorporating affective dimensions into our rhetorical practices.

Reembodying circulation is not merely a theoretical exercise—it’s an invocation for anyone invested in the future of rhetoric, communication, and public discourse. It is also an invocation for anyone invested in social action and social change. As I have demonstrated throughout this book, looking at affective circulation from a transnational feminist rhetorical perspective can enrich our understanding of how rhetoric functions in contemporary contexts, bringing to light the raw, often invisible forces that drive human connection and conflict.

In an era where digital platforms dominate public discourse and communication, understanding the role of affect—the embodied experiences of emotions, sensations, orientations, and feelings—in shaping rhetoric offers scholars a critical lens through which to analyze existing forms of persuasion, influence, and meaning-making. It also provides a lens for understanding the ways in which power and social relations work in a digital, transnational space dominated by neoliberal logics. Although Sboui’s case may not lay out a precise roadmap, it illuminates the transformative power of affective rhetorics, revealing their potential to disrupt entrenched systems and inspire meaningful change. It also raises questions about the consequences of such rhetorical practices for public discourse as well as individual and collective agency. For instance, the spread of disinformation and polarizing content often relies on the strategic use of affect to exploit vulnerabilities in human perception. Scholars and activists must grapple with how rhetorical theories and modes of engagement can respond to and critique these exploitive strategies while also considering how to foster ethical practices in digital communication.

One way to address this, as Hardy et al. suggest, is to examine the infrastructures that shape and reshape rhetorical environments:

Page 138 →The infrastructures that support public community formation and deliberation may change, affecting users and their rhetorical interventions, but publics are also adaptable, navigating constraints and influencing the shape of platform infrastructures. Therein lies an ongoing research agenda for scholars of rhetoric and digitality: to document, theorize, and critique the dialectical co-constitution of infrastructure and agency in a quickly shifting media ecology that nonetheless inherits the long-recognized problems of media ownership.²²

Similarly, Chaput reminds us that “it is imperative that we learn to discern and negotiate these affective forces as part of our rhetorical practices.”²³ For me, that imperative comes from recognizing and realizing the role of bodies in digital circulation: the affective capacity to move other bodies—individuals and communities—in profound ways. Affect operates beyond the realm of traditional argumentative structures, engaging audiences on a visceral level. Digital platforms amplify this phenomenon, with algorithms prioritizing emotionally charged content—be it outrage, joy, or fear—because of its capacity to generate clicks, shares, and engagement. As a result, the transsituational circulation of affect-laden content contributes to shaping public opinion, constructing identities, and fostering collective action. In this way, affect permeates digital interactions, influencing not only how messages are created and disseminated but also how they are received, interpreted, and acted upon. For rhetorical scholars and activists, examining how affect circulates within digital spaces can reveal the underlying mechanisms through which persuasion and mobilization occur, shedding light on both the possibilities and limitations for rhetorical engagement and social activism.

Moreover, viewing affective circulation from a transnational feminist rhetorical lens bridges the gap between the virtual and the material. Affect moves seamlessly across these domains, connecting the digital with the embodied. For example, the visceral responses elicited by viral videos, memes, or hashtags often manifest in offline behaviors, such as protests and marches. This blending of affective experiences across contexts makes it imperative for rhetorical scholars and activists to consider not only the content of digital rhetoric but also the embodied reactions it provokes. Such an approach recognizes the interconnectedness of digital and physical spaces and emphasizes the need for a more robust understanding of rhetoric’s affective and material impact.

By taking up and addressing further some of the issues raised in this book—ethical concerns, power dynamics, methodological challenges, and Page 139 →technological mediations—scholars of rhetoric and activists alike can develop a more comprehensive and critical perspective on the role of affect in digital circulation. I see this work as more than just illuminating the machinery of persuasion; this work has the potential to provide rhetorical tools and strategies to rebuild digital spaces into more equitable, empathetic, and meaningful environments—a vision that demands our collective creativity and care.

As I have argued thus far, the digital space in and of itself is an unequal, uneven, and nonsynchronous place. Reembodying circulation ultimately means turning our attention to these imbalanced forms of power and the ways in which those forms of power affectively reinforce the uneven lived experiences of people globally. Such attention is necessary and imperative if we are to work toward exposing those power relations and ultimately rupturing them. As with any institutional space, we are bound by structures of power in the digital sphere, but we are not paralyzed by them. As human actors—as human bodies—we have the rhetorical ability and, more important, the rhetorical responsibility to critically and reflexively examine our own embodied relationalities if we are to ever leverage, disrupt, alter, or produce new affects and new social relations. The stakes are as real as the bodies at risk.