Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2023
Department
Communication
Abstract
This essay offers a rhetorical reading of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings to make sense of how widespread outrage over replacing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a conservative idealogue was resolved through the invocation of postfeminist motherhood. I argue that GOP Senators and Barrett herself positioned her nomination as the achievement of feminist goals, justified through rhetorics of choice and the idealization of (white) motherhood. These strategies cement Barrett as the logical and defensible successor to both Ginsburg’s seat and her legacy of feminist work. I conclude with the implications of this circulation of postfeminist motherhood, with focus on political movements for equality and treatment of women.
Original Publication Information
Coker, C. R. (2023). Replacing Notorious: Barret, Ginsburg, and Postfeminist Positioning. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 26(1), 101-130. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/896206
ThinkIR Citation
Coker, Calvin R., "Replacing Notorious: Barret, Ginsburg, and Postfeminist Positioning" (2023). Faculty Scholarship. 880.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/880
ORCID
0000-0001-6767-3398
Included in
Communication Commons, Political Science Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons
Comments
This work originally appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023, 101-130, published by Michigan State University Press.
© 2023 The Author(s). All rights reserved. Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023, pp. 101–130. ISSN 1094-8392