Walking and the reinvention of space

• Main Author: Topinka, Robert J
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: geography; language, rhetoric and composition
• ISBN: 1124816216; 9781124816210

Through the figure of the walker, this thesis considers the relationship between rhetoric and space, where rhetoric is understood as embodied, performative action and space is considered both as a material artifact and an ideological production. While it is a basic tenet of rhetoric that it always occurs in a given location, only recently have scholars of rhetoric begun to privilege space both as a theoretical lens and as part of everyday rhetorical practice. By positioning the walker as an embodied rhetorical agent in two spaces typical of everyday life in capitalist societies---suburban Iowa Street in Lawrence, Kansas, and a nature park built upon an inoperative coal mine in Newcastle England---this thesis attends to space as it both constrains and enables agency in different spatial milieus.