The Things I Won't Tell You: Privycy, A Rhetorical Strategy

Open Access
- Author:
- Lehman, Marguerite Nguyen
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- May 01, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Anne T Demo, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Michele Jean Kennerly, Committee Member
Pamela Ruth Vanhaitsma, Committee Member - Keywords:
- privy
privacy
publicity
transgender
MeToo
disclosure
rhetoric
queer theory - Abstract:
- This thesis introduces privycy as a rhetorical form of resistance. Privycy is a rhetorical form which denotes the status of being granted access to information (i.e. “to be privy”). When invoked by marginalized subjects for whom their visibility enables further oppression, privycy becomes a useful rhetorical form to resist rhetoric’s injunction to public disclosure. Through its use, subjects preserve the queer conditions of indeterminacy which inaugurate rhetorical agency, thus provoking a paranoid response from their audiences. This thesis applies the concept of privycy to the Shitty Media Men list, a document of collecting anonymous disclosures of sexual misconduct within the media industry, as well as transgender stealth discourse. Through these case studies, this thesis reveals three implications of privycy. First, privycy is the means by which marginalized subjects may assert sovereignty over the circulation of knowledge. Second, privycy troubles distinctions between ally and marginalized subject, thereby confusing hegemonic hostility’s target. Third, privycy exposes the entitlement inherent within rhetoric’s, and scholarship’s, emphasis on publicness.