Introduction

Affective Rhetorics is situated at the intersection of several areas of study in the field of rhetoric and writing: circulation studies, digital rhetorical studies, and feminist rhetorical studies. In bringing together these areas of research, Affective Rhetorics addresses rhetorical questions of digitality and circulation from a much-needed transnational feminist rhetorical perspective while simultaneously applying those insights so that rhetoricians, writers, and activists interested in social change might better understand how to engage in and leverage circulation productively in digital spaces. Methodologically, the book forges its arguments not only from theory but also from a qualitative study of digital texts and their embodied relations.

As I discuss in more depth in the following chapter, the current understanding of digital circulation in the context of rhetorical studies refers to the ways in which information, images, and narratives are distributed, reconfigured, and delivered across online platforms.⁵ While I see validity in this definition, I believe it falls short in realizing the potentiality of circulation. As I see it, circulation is much more than simply a means of distribution and delivery: circulation is an embodied process that necessarily involves power, affect, and social relations. It is also embodied because it is often shaped by asymmetrical access to resources, cultural hegemony, and the reinforcement of global power structures. For instance, memes, hashtags, and viral videos transcend geographical boundaries, yet their meaning and impact are often contingent on localized contexts and actual bodies.

It is no surprise that the rapid growth of digital technologies has transformed digital circulation on a global scale and raised critical questions about how power, identity, and inequality intersect in these virtual spaces. What is a surprise, however, is the lack of attention to these intersections in Page 6 →studies on circulation and digital culture, a dearth I take up more explicitly in chapter 1 in order to make clear the urgent need for a rhetorical framework that accounts for both the global and the local as well as the intersecting oppressions that govern digital spaces. This framework of circulation, I propose, necessarily centralizes the body within a transnational context and foregrounds the interdependent relationship between digitality, affect, and neoliberalism.

The relationship between digital circulation, affect, and neoliberalism, I argue, constitutes a compelling nexus for understanding contemporary sociopolitical dynamics, cultural production, and the shaping of individual and collective identities. By intertwining these concepts, one can examine how affect—bodily associations, responses, reactions, and orientations⁶—mediated through the circulation of digital technologies and platforms, are mobilized within an ideological framework of neoliberalism to produce specific modes of governance, subjectivity, and communication. To my mind, the interplay of affect, digital circulation, and neoliberalism provides a powerful lens for understanding the emotional and ideological currents of the digital age and their material effects.

Throughout this book I rely heavily on Sara Ahmed’s use of affect. Ahmed conceptualizes affect as deeply relational, social, and political. In her work, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014), she emphasizes how affect emerges through interactions between bodies, circulating and shaping collective experiences and social bonds. In addition, Ahmed highlights the “stickiness” of affect, where emotions adhere to particular bodies or groups through repetition, reinforcing stereotypes, and societal hierarchies. She also connects affect to systems of power, showing how emotions like fear, love, or anger are mobilized to sustain exclusions and divisions, as with racism, sexism, or nationalism. Like Ahmed, I see circulation as a process involving bodily, affective orientations—our emotional directions toward or away from other bodies. These orientations are shaped by histories, ideologies, and societal norms influencing belongings and exclusions. Ultimately, affect, as it circulates, functions as a dynamic and politically charged force that shapes individual and collective realities.

In addition to Ahmed’s work, my use of affect is informed by other scholars who have taken up affect as central to understanding how power, identity, and politics are experienced and enacted. Such work has explored the precognitive and embodied nature of affect⁷; the circulation of affect in economic, political, and social systems⁸; the material and spatial dimensions of affect⁹; and the cultural and political implications of affective practices Page 7 →such as empathy.¹⁰ Together, this work provides a rich, interdisciplinary framework for analyzing the ways affect shapes and is shaped by the material, social, and political dimensions of life.

Rebecca Coleman’s work on affect is particularly useful for this book, as our frameworks situate affect in similar ways. For instance, we both argue that affect has several important elements: it is relational; it is bodily and material; and it is always in process. In exploring the relationship between affect, temporality, and visual culture through an analysis of screens, Coleman emphasizes how affect shapes and is shaped by materiality and the future. She argues that affect operates through imaginaries of the future and is mediated by visual representations and material practices. Moreover, her work highlights how bodies and their affective experiences shape and are shaped by societal norms and anticipatory feelings: “Bodies and the world are thus in these affective relations, and co-produce each other ... It is not so much the case of an individual’s agency being constrained or liberated by social structures as it is that the individual and the social are in affective relations with each other: are affected by each other, are invented through each other.”¹¹

This cyclical, mediated process is important here. Because affect operates as a bodily force that shapes behavior, orients bodies, and drives engagement, the process of digital circulation inevitably channels affect into forms of communication that sustain or challenge neoliberal logics. Neoliberalism, in turn, capitalizes on the commodification of affect and the individualizing tendencies of digital platforms to reinforce its ideological dominance. My definition of neoliberalism comes from scholar David Harvey’s seminal work, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005). Harvey defines neoliberalism as a political and economic ideology that promotes the primacy of market mechanisms, individual entrepreneurial freedom, and private property rights as the central pillars of societal organization. Emerging as a dominant global paradigm in the late twentieth century, neoliberalism seeks to minimize state intervention in the economy, advocating for deregulation, privatization, and free trade as the means to foster economic growth and efficiency. Harvey argues that this framework is not merely about economic reform but serves as a class-based project to consolidate wealth and power among elites by redistributing resources upward, often at the expense of social equity and public welfare. This process reshapes social relations, reconfigures state functions to support capital accumulation, and often deepens inequality under the guise of individual responsibility and market freedom. What has become even more precarious about neoliberalism, though, is its use as a Page 8 →discursive mode of power. As Harvey states, neoliberalism has “become hegemonic as a mode of discourse. It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in and understand the world.”¹²

In a space like the digital sphere, a social environment comprised of user-generated content and participatory engagement, the circulation of affect and its attachment to neoliberal ideologies is always already intervening in and shaping the discursive practices of reading and writing, arguing and responding, protesting and rallying. On the web, this occurs at a more intensified velocity, magnitude, and scope, making it harder for web users to achieve any kind of critical distance. For example, the fast-paced nature of the digital—the instantaneous features of social media, such as “liking,” “sharing,” “retweeting”—speeds up emotion, as users can effortlessly circulate their most immediate impressions by using the “emotional” buttons available to them. Moreover, the social and material space in which those texts circulate—the fast, widespread digital environment that is the web—plays an intrinsic role in reinforcing those emotions and thus reinforcing various kinds of affect. This is because neoliberalism fosters a culture of self-optimization and branding, where individuals are encouraged to market their identities as commodities. Affect, then, becomes a key currency in constructing these branded selves.¹³ This process is precarious because neoliberal pressures intersect with global inequalities as marginalized individuals must navigate the double bind of authenticity and marketability in a digital landscape that rewards commodified affect over collective liberation. The latter point is particularly important here. The role of affect in digital circulation adds a critical dimension to understanding the intersections of digital circulation, neoliberalism, and bodies. Affect, understood as the embodied and emotional experiences that contribute to circulation, is increasingly leveraged within neoliberal systems to drive engagement, labor, and consumption. Platforms rely on affective economies, where emotional responses such as outrage, solidarity, or empathy are transformed into metrics like clicks, shares, and likes.

While affective engagement can empower marginalized voices and challenge power structures, it can also reinforce neoliberal logic by commodifying activism and reducing complex issues to simplistic, emotionally charged narratives. The “attention economy” of digital platforms often prioritizes affective intensity over critical reflection, fostering a culture of instant gratification and superficial engagement. Moreover, the algorithms that govern digital platforms are not neutral—they reflect and reproduce existing power Page 9 →dynamics.¹⁴ As I discuss through my case study analysis, for example, the amplification of certain affects over others—such as outrage over empathy—can distort public discourse and entrench polarization. These dynamics raise critical questions about the ethics of affective engagement and the role of digital rhetoric in shaping collective futures.

From a more hopeful perspective, the affective and rhetorical dimensions of digital spaces do hold the potential for resistance and transformation. By critically examining how affect circulates within digital culture under neoliberalism, we can identify opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, foster solidarity, and imagine more equitable futures. This interplay is not static; it evolves with technological, cultural, and political shifts, underscoring the need for ongoing critical engagement with the emotional and ideological dimensions of digital life.

As I will elaborate in chapter 1, social media represents a particularly fertile site for this kind of critical engagement—specifically, the convergence of material and symbolic rhetoric. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) do not simply host textual content—they curate affective experiences through visual aesthetics, sound, algorithms, and bodily engagement (e.g., scrolling, swiping, facial recognition). These embodied interactions are not merely functional; they shape meaning by generating moods, intensities, and rhythms that work in tandem with textual or symbolic elements. For instance, a meme or video might be persuasive not only because of what it says, but because of how it feels—its pacing, imagery, sound, and the physical interaction it demands. In this sense, digital rhetoric is inherently hybrid, dissolving the binary between matter and meaning. Within this framework, affect acts as the connective tissue, allowing rhetorical scholars to examine how persuasion occurs through felt experience as much as through rational discourse. This becomes especially relevant under neoliberalism, where digital platforms commodify attention and emotion, turning affective engagement into economic value. In this context, social media doesn’t just mediate communication; it monetizes affect, transforming users’ emotional responses into data and labor. Thus, studying digital rhetoric and circulation through the lens of affect reveals how neoliberal logics are embedded in the very structures of online communication—where the emotional resonance of a post is not just persuasive, but profitable. Bridging new materialism and linguistic symbolism through affect, then, allows rhetorical studies to critically engage with the political economy of digital platforms and the ways they shape, discipline, and exploit affective life. In this way, affect theory grounded in materialist perspectives enables a Page 10 →richer understanding of how digital platforms shape publics, identities, and rhetorical agency.

As a rhetorical scholar, feminist, and activist, I cannot ignore the necropolitics embedded in global capital and digitality—the impact of circulation on bodies and how they are represented and thus valued. As a result, Affective Rhetorics seeks to reembody circulation by turning to affect. Moreover, Affective Rhetorics offers a transnational feminist rhetorical approach to digital circulation that centralizes power and social relations by illuminating the role of affect and recognizing not only the role of the body as a digital representation that circulates but also an active agent in the circulation process—the body as both a “thing” that circulates and an agent that circulates the “thing.” Because affective charges undergirding digital circulation make rhetorical meaning more malleable and enable rhetorics to carry very different meanings, I argue that these affective variations make it necessary for rhetoricians and activists to carefully examine the embodied practices of digital circulation through a transnational lens: first, to identify the various affective influences that give certain rhetorical arguments more clout; second, to demonstrate how rapid and repeating arguments circulate on a transnational scale; and third, to understand the transsituationality¹⁵ of digital circulation in order to inquire into its material effects on bodies across time, space, and place.

Following in the footsteps of other transnational feminist rhetorical scholars,¹⁶ I advocate for a transnational feminist rhetorical lens with which to study digital circulation because, unlike other rhetorical approaches to circulation, a transnational feminist rhetorical approach serves as an “interdisciplinary analytic, attentive to the constraints of neoliberalism and to the power differentials and inequalities that shape geopolitical alignments.”¹⁷ This kind of framework can help expose how the commodification of affect through digital circulation sustains neoliberal logics by incentivizing reactive, surface-level engagement rather than structural critique. And this exposure can help rhetoricians, writers, and activists see more clearly the ways in which vectors of power operate on both micro and macro levels so that we might begin to identify the affective energies undergirding circulation in order to leverage, disrupt, and change them.

Affective Rhetorics begins and ends with a call to reembody circulation. Chapter 1 opens by confronting a significant gap in rhetorical studies: the persistent “disembodiment” of circulation. By delving into scholarly conversations Page 11 →within both circulation and digital rhetorical studies, I explain how the new materialist turn has disproportionately emphasized texts themselves, sidelining the embodied and asymmetrical power dynamics inherent in their movement. This critique, however, is not a dismissal of existing research but rather an effort to discern its strengths, limitations, and opportunities for recalibration. In other words, the aim here is to build upon existing research, addressing gaps that prevent us from fully understanding circulation’s social, cultural, and political implications. My goal is to reimagine circulation within digital culture—not as a purely object-oriented process but as a dynamic interplay of bodies, texts, and power that can be leveraged for social transformation. Ultimately, by revisiting circulation with a more nuanced lens, we can reimagine its potential to shape digital culture and affect social change.

Central to my argument is the assertion that digitality is inextricably linked to bodies. The digital, as a manifestation of neoliberal logics, relies on the engagement of human bodies with digital practices, generating and reproducing power through cyclical modes of affect. I frame affect as the “neoliberal currency of the web” and posit that these affective charges—fusions of history, emotion, and context—reshape social relations by attaching meaning to encounters between bodies and texts. This process, I argue, necessitates a shift in perspective: we must reembody circulation by adopting an affect-oriented lens. To unpack these complex power dynamics, I propose a transnational feminist rhetorical theory of circulation—what I call “affective circulation.”

Affective circulation, which unfolds in the subsequent chapters through my case study analysis, reveals how affect operates across temporal and spatial boundaries, forging global connections that prioritize relationality over exclusionary borders. Through the lens of affective circulation, I investigate not just which texts circulate and where, but also how and why they do so. I analyze digital circulation across three layered dimensions:

1. The amplification of rhetorical arguments in the initial weeks of textual emergence. Amplification, for example, illustrates how Sboui’s images circulated in fragmented forms that resonated with circulators’ ideological and emotional attachments. This fracturing often decontextualizes texts, transforming their meanings.
2. The velocity at which rhetorics gain traction over months. In Sboui’s case, velocity uncovers how the urgency of affect drives certain rhetorics to travel farther and faster, often polarizing audiences.
3. Page 12 →The endurance of specific rhetorics years—and even a decade—later. Throughout the case study, endurance takes center stage, revealing how habituated emotions solidify certain rhetorics into normative beliefs embedded in cultural memory.

Together, these layers of circulation reveal the cyclical and transformative nature of affective circulation, shedding light on the fluid yet persistent interplay of affect, power, and rhetoric in shaping digital culture.

In grounding this framework, I conclude chapter 1 with a preview of the case study and its historical backdrop—Tunisia’s Arab uprisings and their implications for women’s rights and mobilization. By situating rhetorical ecologies within specific contexts, I show how these contexts are both retained and transformed as other bodies encounter and engage in the circulation of these texts, propelling them across time and space.

Chapter 2, “Amplified Rhetorics,” takes the concept of amplification and reframes it as a lens for understanding what happens to embodied texts in the electric, affect-laden moments when they encounter other human bodies. The chapter begins by tracing the term’s roots in digital composition studies, where amplification has long been tied to delivery and “recomposition.”¹⁸ Traditionally, this framing implies a deliberate shaping of a text for an intended audience or encounter. But digital circulation, as I argue here, operates far beyond intent. I complicate this definition to show how amplification works as an affective phenomenon in the neoliberal web—a moment of attachment where bodies and texts meet, sparking connections or distances that alter meaning itself. It is in these moments of embodied reaction, these encounters, that amplification comes alive.

This chapter brings this idea to the forefront through an analysis of the first four weeks of Sboui’s protest. Within this short time frame, her images moved rapidly, creating waves of rhetorical arguments about women’s bodies. I explore how these arguments were amplified, their meaning magnified and refracted as they circulated. For instance, some amplified rhetorics cast the body as a site of objectification or madness, while others reframed it as a canvas for protest or a symbol of national identity. These moments of amplification, I argue, expose how a body’s response to a text—or to the affective energy that text carries—focuses attention on a specific “slice” of the original text. Whether that slice is an image, phrase, or single word, it becomes saturated with affect, magnified, and recirculated as something distinct, often disconnected from the text’s original context or intent. The process of amplification, as I show, transforms both the text and its rhetorical Page 13 →message, altering its trajectory and impact. At the heart of this analysis is the relationship between bodies, texts, and the act of (re)reading. Amplification is not simply a mechanical process of delivery—it’s an affective moment of contact and interpretation. Through Sboui’s case, I reveal how these moments are deeply embedded in the neoliberal rhythms of the digital sphere, where amplified texts are not just recomposed but recharged with new, and sometimes contradictory, meanings.

Chapter 3, “Velocitized Rhetorics,” picks up where amplification leaves off, using the concept of velocity to examine how affect—the neoliberal currency of the web—reshapes and reorients social relations. In composition studies, rhetorical velocity traditionally refers to the strategies writers use to anticipate how third parties might recompose their texts. But this definition assumes a level of control that dissolves in the frictionless speed of digital circulation. Therefore, I reinterpret velocity as the speed and scale at which texts circulate through affective encounters, building social alliances in the process. Over three months, amplified messages from Sboui’s texts gained momentum, accelerating in ways that polarized audiences and narrowed interpretive possibilities. These polarizing effects, I show, result from the way affect works as both an adhesive and a wedge—binding some groups together while pushing others apart.

This polarization becomes clear through my analysis of femen’s appropriation of Sboui’s text within the framework of white feminism and the counter-response by Muslim Women Against femen (MWAF). Here, velocity doesn’t just move messages faster—it strips them of nuance, funneling affective attachments into streamlined and oppositional meanings. The texts, once layered and complex, become battlegrounds for ideological conflict. Through this process, new rhetorical meanings emerge, tied to racial and cultural anxieties. This chapter illustrates how velocity amplifies not just the movement of texts but the hierarchies of power embedded within them, locking social relations into rigid and often inequitable patterns.

In chapter 4, “Enduring Rhetorics,” I turn to the question of how certain rhetorics persist over time. Endurance, as I define it, is the capacity of a rhetoric to remain in circulation long after its initial moment of amplification or velocity has passed. Endurance relies on what Ahmed has called the “stickiness” of affect—the way repeated encounters with a text solidify its rhetorical meaning, embedding it into the cultural imaginary. Examining related texts two years after Sboui’s initial protest (and then again over a decade later), particularly those of femen, I show how certain rhetorical strategies and appeals remain potent, not because they are static but because Page 14 →their affective charge has been repeatedly reinforced. Over time, this stickiness transforms into a kind of cultural norm, shaping how bodies and texts are understood within a broader neoliberal framework.

For instance, the polarization I traced in chapter 3 gives way here to a more insidious process of solidification. femen’s rhetoric, initially contested, begins to echo neoliberal logics of universality and solidarity, becoming a metonym for those ideologies. This metonymic transformation reveals how associations—whether with objects, ideas, or identities—become “felt” through circulation, eventually manifesting as emotions like sympathy, compassion, or anger. These emotions, in turn, habituate the body to particular beliefs and practices, embedding them into the social fabric. Endurance, then, is not just about longevity—it’s about the slow sedimentation of power relations through affective repetition.

Finally, chapter 5, “Affective Circulation,” returns to the project’s central concern: reembodying circulation. Revisiting the questions posed in chapter 1, I argue that rhetorics endure because amplification, velocity, and affect combine to privilege certain voices and suppress others. This dynamic reflects the affective power of neoliberalism, which compresses diverse experiences into simplified narratives of empowerment or oppression. Yet, as my case study shows, this very process of affective circulation also reveals points of resistance. By critically examining the affective underpinnings of circulation, we can begin to imagine how rhetoricians, writers, and activists might disrupt these cycles and leverage affect for more just purposes.

To that end, this chapter concludes with a call for a “rhetorical affective reflexivity”—a rhetorical practice of self-awareness that asks rhetors, writers, and activists to examine not only the content of what circulates but the affective charges that stick to it. Such reflexivity requires a dual stance: both critical distance and embodied closeness. By interrogating our own relationality to texts, we open the possibility of producing new affects, new alliances, and new social relations. While Sboui’s case may not offer a definitive roadmap, it points toward the potential for affective rhetorics to spark transformation, offering a glimpse of a digital circulation that moves us toward justice rather than entrenching the status quo.

The relationship between bodies, affect, and digital circulation has always been important because it has always been precarious. And this precariousness—the reality of a world where bodies are swept into covert networks of influence and power—demands our urgent attention. Every day bodies are Page 15 →implicated in rhetorical practices that reinforce and exploit neoliberal logics, creating and policing power dynamics that shape and control the social and geopolitical landscape. The circulation of rhetoric, digitally and otherwise, is not merely an abstraction. It is embodied. It is material. It affects. It wounds. It capitalizes. It controls.

We know now that the utopian concept of “digital democracy” is built on a paradox: every click, every query, every word we feed into the digital ether is mined, analyzed, and monetized in service of powerful interests. Our texts—the memes, mashups, parodies, and posts we create and share—are transformed into commodities, tools for profit and control. Many tumultuous and potent events involving digital circulation have occurred since I began writing this book: the MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, the Trump era and its violent aftershocks, the upheaval of covid-19, the rise of artificial intelligence, the fraught discourse over fake news and fact-checking, the US government’s decision to ban TikTok, the numerous wars and acts of genocide happening across the globe. Each of these moments captures bodies caught in circulation—surveilled, silenced, and commodified. Crucially, this surveillance, silencing, and commodification remains invisible, obscured from everyday users, operating through what Foucault aptly termed “governance at a distance.”¹⁹ Feminist scholar Paola Bacchetta and her co-authors remind us in their essay “Transnational Feminist Practices Against War” that the racialized and gendered impacts of contemporary global media are deeply tied to colonialism’s enduring discursive legacies, as well as the technologies and industrial practices shaping modern culture and global capital.²⁰ These dynamics are neither incidental nor benign. If we accept that the web itself functions as a neoliberal site structured by affect, then we must also recognize that circulation is a vital part of this system. What circulates—what we circulate—whether digitally or otherwise, ripples outward, shaping the social and political relations in which we are enmeshed. To understand circulation, then, is to understand the very mechanics of power in a digital age.

Take the rhetoric of President Trump, for example. Before, throughout, and between his presidencies, Trump used digital media to circulate dehumanizing affects with precision, particularly toward immigrants, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. His language and the affective energies tied to his words have fostered an environment where violence against marginalized groups has become normalized and discrimination emboldened. The escalation of violent language in public discourse isn’t just a shift in tone; it’s a restructuring of risk—a direct threat to bodies already Page 16 →imperiled by systemic injustice. Those targeted have faced not only policy rollbacks but also the bolstered public expressions of prejudice and hate. This normalization of violent discourse isn’t rhetorical theater: it has material consequences. It is lived and suffered in real time.

For rhetorical scholars, these phenomena are more than fleeting headlines. They demand that we interrogate the ways digital circulation creates tangible, material effects through affective relations—how a hashtag, a tweet, or a speech ripples outward, heightening tensions, shaping policy, and impacting lives. It seems that rhetorical studies is at a crossroads. Despite significant theoretical and methodological shifts—such as the transnational perspective in feminist rhetorical studies, the move toward ecological rhetorics in digital studies, and the turn toward new materialism in circulation studies—these approaches often remain siloed. Few scholars have addressed how these frameworks might inform or even rely on one another. This gap, perhaps, arises from divergent approaches to textuality and power. Whereas feminist rhetoricians ask questions about the politics of the body and the asymmetries of power relations that result from language and rhetorical practices, digital and ecological rhetoricians studying circulation ask questions about the nature of object-oriented rhetoric and textual actancy within complex systems. And yet, the digital itself is an undeniably transnational site of power—a complex neoliberal ecosystem where bodies engage in the circulation of affect, a force that both defines and reinforces social relations.

It is here that Affective Rhetorics intervenes, bridging feminist rhetorical inquiries with digital and circulation studies. In bringing a transnational feminist rhetorical analytic to the study of digital circulation, Affective Rhetorics seeks to unite these disparate subfields, offering a more robust lens through which to understand digital circulation. In the digital spaces where information and capital flow globally, bodies and social relations are constantly (re)shaped and (re)oriented by modes of affect. Affective Rhetorics reveals how such modes of affect operate as currency in digital circulation, always tied to bodies, power, and social dynamics. This framework allows us to see power in sharper relief, tracing its movements on both micro and macro levels. And, most important, it equips us to identify, disrupt, and transform the affective energies that sustain oppressive systems. I see this book as a call to action: to recognize the material stakes of digital circulation, to interrogate the power dynamics embedded in digital flows, and to position rhetorical scholarship in service of imagining and creating more just worlds. This is my hope for Affective Rhetorics—to not only understand digital circulation but to leverage it, to unsettle it, and to transform it.