The Rhetorical Making of the Asian/Asian American Face: Reading and Writing Asian Eyelids
Abstract
In The Rhetorical Making of the Asian/Asian American Face: Reading and Writing Asian Eyelids, I examine representations of East Asian blepharoplasty in online video in order to gain a sense of how cultural values change over time. Drawing on scholarship in and around rhetorical theory, cultural rhetorics, Asian American rhetoric, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and postcolonial theory alongside qualitative data analysis of approximately fifty videos and the numerous viewer comments that accompany them, this study is a rhetorical analysis of the discourse on East Asian blepharoplasty in online video. These videos--ranging from mass media excerpts and news reports, to journals of healing and recovery, to short lectures on surgeon techniques, to audience commentary--offer insight into how social time is negotiated in the cross-cultural public sphere of YouTube. I do my analysis in two steps, first looking at how rhetors rationalize the decision to get blepharoplasty, and second, examining the temporal logics that ground these rationalizations. As result, I've identified five tropes through which people rationalize double eyelid surgery: racialization, emotionologization, pragmatization, the split between nature and technology, and agency. Moreover, I've identified at least five temporal logics that ground these tropes: progress, hybridization, timelessness, efficiency, and desire. Using these two sets of findings I build a framework for the analysis, production and organization of multimodal representations of bodies.
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
The Dam Fighters: Commons Environmental Rhetoric, Rhetorical Citizenship, and Local Ethos
Murray, Savannah Paige (Virginia Tech, 2020-11-11)In this dissertation project, I examine the ways in which a grassroots environmental organization, the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA), was able to contribute knowledge and voice concerns regarding a Tennessee ... -
Psychological Outcomes in Asian and Asian American Survivors of the April 16th Shooting at Virginia Tech: Roles of Acculturation and Parental Overprotection
Amatya, Kaushalendra (Virginia Tech, 2011-05-02)The negative impacts of mass shootings on mental health have been documented within the general trauma literature. Substantial research has also shown the Asian population to be a minority group especially vulnerable to ... -
Making Visible Asians and Asian-Americans in Introductory Women's Studies Courses: the Personal Voice in Pedagogy, Making Feminist Connections across Diversity
Samanta, Suchitra (2015)The introductory course in women’s and gender studies (IWGS) first introduces centers, and problematizes the concept of gender and sexuality to undergraduate students, and at a depth not offered in other disciplines. It ...