"All Smell is Disease": Miasma, Sensory Rhetoric, and the Sanitary-Bacteriologic of Visceral Public Health

Where Did the Rhetoric of Science Go? A Double Review of Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science, Case Studies and Issues and Methods, a Two Volume Edited Collection by Randy Harris.

“…I would and have argued that, while adopting the ethos of a scientist-citizen is a responsibility and a duty for all experts and scientists, it is also recommendable in cases of crisis like those witnessed in the last few years, to adopt the ethos of a "scientistactivist" and engage with publics directly to improve their understanding of science (Pietrucci, 2020). Other major examples about the possibilities of studying the relationships between science and publics and science and politics could be found in the work of John Lynch about stem cells (2011,2014); other recent trailblazing approaches to understanding the relationships between science (medicine in this case) and publics can be found in the recent work of Winderman, Mejia, and Rogers (2019) that explores how visceral publics are created by a combination of sensory and medical-etiologic rhetorics that carry raced, classed, and gendered consequences. These are only some recent examples of works dealing with the external rhetoric of science as I think about the big variety of scholarship produced by ARSTM members.…”

Stigma Stories: Rhetoric, Lived Experience, and Chronic Illness

“…Alongside Julia's, I review several other public ostomy stories that have been accused of spreading stigma. I argue that one thing these stories share is the way they draw on experiences with leaks and disability to stage the ostomy as a worst-case scenario or last resort and, in so doing, precipitate a visceral public audience (Johnson, 2016;Winderman et al, 2019) and propagate stigma. Moreover, this chapter extends current RHM theorization of stigma by showing how stigma can actually enhance rhetorical credibility when stories and experiences align with pre-existing stigma.…”

“…Johnson theorized, "Visceral publics have two defining qualities: they emerge from discourse about boundaries, and they cohere by means of intense feeling" (p. 2). Unlike other notions of publics that focus on discursive and ideological affinities that bring together individuals into publics, Johnson's concept of visceral publics focuses squarely on the emotional and embodied responses that unite people in the public sphere (Johnson, 2016;Winderman et al, 2019).…”

“…As Johnson and others have further pointed out, these unifying emotional and embodied responses often include fear, disgust, and hate (Johnson, 2016;Winderman et al, 2019). These feelings are felt so deeply and so viscerally that they "present as self-evident forms of truth" (Johnson, 2016, p. 4; see also Ahmed, 2003Ahmed, , 2015.…”

“Whatever happened to our great gay imaginations?”: The invention of safe sex and the visceral imagination

“…For instance, Emily Winderman, Robert Mejia, and Brandon Rogers deftly demonstrate how miasmatic theories of disease transmission continue to organize robust visceral publics through the circulation of mutually constituting visual and olfactory pedagogies. 24 Shifting focus from the circulation of actual images, I explore how Callen and Berkowitz used language itself to stoke a flexible rhetorical vision of AIDS prevention that relied on imagining the sexual body's fluctuating openness to outside penetration. Therefore, unlike typical investigations into viscerality, my case does not strictly consider how feelings of vulnerability direct groups to close themselves off from others.…”