Stoppage and the Racialized Rhetorics of Mobility.

Flores, Lisa A.

Across a range of disciplines, scholars have raised questions and theorized mobility. Border rhetoric scholars, for instance, trace the racialized tenor of discourses of mobility as they are figured on to some migrant bodies. In this essay, I argue that rhetorical scholars need to extend discussions of mobility to attend to immobility, or stoppage. Offering a set of questions that can guide rhetorical assessment of stoppage, I think through stoppage as a rhetorical mode of racialization. I locate my argument through two sites of stoppage—the 2018 discourse around family separation and child detention at the U.S./Mexico border and the 2019 reemergence of the AgJobs bill.

MEXICO; JUVENILE detention; RHETORIC; RACIALIZATION

Western Journal of Communication, 2020, Vol 84, Issue 3, p247

1057-0314

Academic Journal

10.1080/10570314.2019.1676914