The Agora is a speaker series within the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh that invites scholars to share work of relevance to the many aspects of communication scholarship. The Agora features faculty and graduate students from both the Department of Communication and the wider University of Pittsburgh community, as well as other noted scholars from around the world. The Agora also occasionally features workshops that are relevant to various publics. Some of the workshops focus on mentoring, professional development, and pedagogy among other topics.

Title: Bad to the Bone: Bodies, Science, and the Anti-Rhetoric of the Reactionary Right

Speaker: Dr. Calum Matheson, Chair, Department of Communication

Many researchers have analyzed the rhetoric of reactionary discourses. This talk will suggest that the key pillars of reactionary discourse are understood in their communities as anti-rhetorical: rather than deploying the generative possibilities of trope and figure, these discourses rely on foreclosing alternatives, shutting down multiplicity, and defending against the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in language. To illustrate this point, we will examine the use of bones—especially craniometric measurement—as signifiers in a surprising range of reactionary communities ​including incels, White supremacists, and transphobic conspiracy theorists. Doing so helps to reveal their underlying structural similarities and enable us to think broadly about how reactionary subjectivities are produced, and what resources are available for disrupting them.