Reparative Rhetorics intervenes on the occasion of a long and tumultuous history wherein the public expression of women's pleasure is regulated, policed, and disciplined. Working firmly at the intersection of rhetorical theory/criticism and feminist theory/criticism, the project makes use of some of these humanistic legacies to excavate moments whereby women articulate themselves in public despite the structures of power that have historically sought to constrain these expressions. I argue that when women elaborate their pleasures in public, we are given a glimmer of things as otherwise--futures others than capitalist and patriarchal formulas of meaning. The dissertation critically maps these moments in public culture in the reparative mode. Informed by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, reparative reading strategies seek to "repair" the exclusively negative, bleak state of critical affairs. That is, while feminist and rhetorical scholarship often concludes its findings with the necessary (debilitating) effect of cultural ideologies, like patriarchy and capitalism, reparative criticism, instead, invests itself with the everyday, on-the-ground rhetorical enactments of individuals actually living, breathing, surviving, and thriving in culture. By moving from structure to the everyday within that structure, we are better able to attend to moments of human invention and agency. The dissertation carries with it three scholarly commitments. First, through each case-study chapter, I aim to expand that which "counts" as a matter of public concern. As is well-known, not all sexual practices enjoy the same level of public comfort. The dissertation queries where we might expand the scope of these public/private demarcations within contexts like sadomasochism practices, women's magazines, discussions about women's orgasm, and body visibilities. Second, the dissertation examines the ethics that undergird the expression of pleasure in public. Each chapter contributes to this discussion by asking to what extent holding the question of sexual ethics open is (im)possible. Third, the project aims to reinvest women with sexual agency by engaging in scholarship that does justice to their agential enactments. While much of the scholarly terrain remains committed to explicating how women are blindly trapped in an oppressive structure of control, this project instead, turns to moments wherein women voice themselves despite or because of those vectors of control. To animate this recognition, I draw from both cultural productions firmly at the normative center and the marginal periphery to critically map the effectivities of these constitutive articulations unto sexual-cultural meaning-making practices. In particular, the dissertation analyzes sexual publics forged around mainstream texts such as Fifty Shades of Grey (chapter two) and Cosmopolitan magazine (chapter one) in an effort to rescue these cultures from exclusively paranoid judgments and, instead, ask what a reparative reading strategy might offer these discourses of pleasure. Additionally, I also look to the marked margins, wherein sexual publics are born out of political discussions about women's orgasms (chapter four) and the (in)visibilities of women's bodies (chapter three) to imagine what kinds of sexual avenues are made possible therein. The three contributions emphasize the tremendous importance of attuning ourselves to context while critically preparing for the provisionality of cultural assessments. Taken together, the case-studies approximate that end and seek to highlight the multivocality of productive pleasure expressions in our everyday lives. The mode in which I engage these commitments serves a critical purpose often overlooked when scholars, teachers, and activists begin assessing women's relationships to sex, pleasure, and desire. A now oft-repeated trope in approaching these problematics surfaces as the question: is this liberating or oppressive? Are women, in this instance, hapless victims or transgressive agents? Reparative Rhetorics elucidates the naivety of such questions because lived realities are surely more complex than either/or explanatory logics. To ask if women are hapless victims or transgressive agents in this or that socio-political moment predestines the critical process to simplistic rhetorical assessments so inflexible, their relevance to the production of humanistic theories, classrooms, and future research falters. The project concludes by proposing that sharing pleasure knowledges in public builds productive resources for navigating our social-sexual worlds.

In this essay, I study ambivalence in Pär Lagerkvist's (1891–1974) novel The Dwarf (1944). The ambivalence is primarily expressed through Lagerkvist's use of contrasts, and enhanced by the unreliable narrator. At first glance, the contrasts might be perceived as binary oppositions, but I aim to illustrate how boundaries are dissolved, and I argue that the contrasts cannot in fact be seen as opposites. Instead, a non-binary perspective is required. Inspired primarily by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler, I use a queer reparative reading as my starting point. The analysis focuses specifically on four examples of contrasts that I claim are most prominent in the novel: love–hate, closeness–distance, superiority–inferiority, and good–evil. Although the protagonist is confused by the dissolved boundaries between these, he is the one who embodies them the most. He might seem as a hateful, inferior, and evil character who wants to maintain distance from everyone else. However, he is not inferior all the time and he also expresses more loving feelings and shows a desire to be close to others. This raises the question whether he truly is evil or if his actions are simply the result of being mistreated. Reading the novel from a non-binary perspective thus proves that we can never reach any definitive answers. Rather, we are forced to continue asking important, difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable questions.

Instructions for a Walk Off Line engages in a reparative reading of Fluxus and Conceptual artworks, with a focus on the practice of stanley brouwn, to outline a set of strategies for contemporary artists to approach the role of bureaucracy in mediating their relationship with art institutions. This research starts from the observation that modern and contemporary art museums are increasingly invested in inviting underrepresented artists into their spaces without engaging in the necessary structural changes to meet their conditions for being included. Bureaucracy is one of those structural elements that maintains and perpetuates certain norms and excludes those who do not have proximity to them. In the approach to Fluxus and Conceptual works, this thesis relies on intermedia and queer theory to analyse how bureaucratic form, language, and function are appropriated and fused with artistic media to expose normative systems, destabilise them, and deviate from them. stanley brouwn’s Aantal stappen of meters in de richting van diverse steden in the collection of Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven is taken as an exemplary case, as brouwn is known to have a specific set of conditions for the display and dissemination of his work. Situating brouwn’s practice in relation to the strategies of appropriation, exposure, destabilisation and deviation, this research proposes his work and conditions as a relational practice of walking off line. The notion of the line, a recurring formal aspect in brouwn’s work, represents the norm that brouwn and his contemporaries deviate from. The museum staff and the audience are invited into this process through different instructions and conditions for the installation of, and engagement with the work. This thesis demonstrates that these instructions are not static but allow for interpretations and invite playfulness. The strategies in this research are offered in the same way; they are not presented as a single way of walking off line but invite a range of possibilities based on the needs and conditions relevant to the context of working with bureaucracy in the arts today.

Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) is one of Sweden’s most well-known and prominent authors. The field of research connected to both her personal life and her body of work is certainly immense. However there are still gaps in the research concerning Lagerlöf’s social critique through her literature. Alongside her authorship she was active in the peace- and women’s movement, and particularly so in women’s suffrage. Simultaneously, as the women’s movement gained momentum at the turn of the 20th century, there was a domestic armament in Sweden. It was at this point when Lagerlöf wrote Herr Arne’s Hoard/The Treasure (1903). The purpose of this study is to examine the connections between manliness and violence in Selma Lagerlöf’s Herr Arne’s Hoard/The Treasure. This is achieved by means of reparative reading using gender theory from the Nordic historic masculinity studies. The reparative reading is based on a model of interpretation, first promoted by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and is not about hidden meanings but rather what the text explicitly represents. The analysis shows that the text criticizes a certain fit for military service type of manliness. This particular manliness is characterized by self-interest and vindictiveness, which is tied to an archaic barbarity and social stagnation. At the same time it is connected to positions of power. The analysis also shows, through the critic, a feminine desire for justice, a movement towards change and the subversive potential of sympathy. / Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) är en av Sveriges namnkunnigaste och mest prominenta författare. Forskningsfältet kring hennes person och produktion är närmast oöverskådligt. Det finns emellertid fortfarande luckor i forskningen gällande hur samhällskritisk Lagerlöf egentligen var i sitt författarskap. Vid sidan av sitt författarskap var hon också aktiv inom freds- och kvinnorörelsen, i synnerhet i kampen för kvinnlig rösträtt. Samtidigt som kvinnorörelsen tog fart kring sekelskiftet 1900, genomfördes en inhemsk militär upprustning i Sverige. Under denna tidsperiod skriver Lagerlöf berättelsen Herr Arnes penningar (1903). Den här studien undersöker kopplingen mellan manlighet och våld i Selma Lagerlöfs Herr Arnes penningar. Studien genomför en reparativ läsning utifrån ett genusvetenskapligt perspektiv med teorier hämtade från den nordiska historiska manlighetsforskningen. Den reparativa läsningen är baserad på en tolkningsmodell som först lanserades av Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick och som handlar om att inte se till vad en text döljer utan till vad den vill. Analysen påvisar att texten kritiserar en särskild vapenför manlighet. Denna manlighet karakteriseras av egennytta och hämndbegär, som förbinds med ett arkaiskt barbari och samhällelig stagnation. Samtidigt förbinds det med maktpositioner. Analysen synliggör utifrån kritiken också ett kvinnligt begär efter rättvisa, en rörelse mot förändring och sympatins subversiva potential.