PCOS Discourses, Symbolic Impacts, and Feminist Rhetorical Disruptions of Institutional Hegemonies examines the power of hegemonic institutions and their impact on bodies, focusing on how women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) employ rhetorical strategies to resist and disrupt mass media and clinical discourses. It argues that digital and mass media have denied women with PCOS opportunities for autonomous subject formation and ontologies and epistemologies, but by networking in participatory new media, they can reclaim their agency.

Format: Hardback
Length: 162 pages
Publication date: 05 September 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

PCOS Discourses, Symbolic Impacts, and Feminist Rhetorical Disruptions of Institutional Hegemonies explores the influence of hegemonic institutions on bodies, particularly the experiences of women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). It argues that bio-power and digital and mass media have limited women's ability to form autonomous subjects and construct their ontologies and epistemologies. However, by engaging in participatory new media, women with PCOS can reclaim their agency. The monograph examines three PCOS artifacts—a television episode, an online popular culture forum, and an online health forum—to support this argument. It bridges the personal and academic spheres and contributes to conversations surrounding femaleness, femininity, women's health challenges, and advocacy, as located in RHM scholarship and related fields.

PCOS Discourses, Symbolic Impacts, and Feminist Rhetorical Disruptions of Institutional Hegemonies

PCOS Discourses, Symbolic Impacts, and Feminist Rhetorical Disruptions of Institutional Hegemonies examines the power of hegemonic institutions and their impact on bodies, focusing on how women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) employ rhetorical strategies to resist and disrupt mass media and clinical discourses that seek to define them and their experiences. This monograph argues that through the enactment of bio-power (Foucault), digital and mass media have denied women with PCOS opportunities for autonomous subject formation, and, in turn, allowances for constructing their ontologies and epistemologies. However, by networking in participatory new media, McKinley posits, women with PCOS can reclaim their agency. To support this argument, McKinley rhetorically examines three PCOS artifacts—a television episode, an online popular culture forum, and an online health forum. This monograph bridges the personal and the academic and adds to and extends the work being done in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) on PCOS through the adoption of a unique theoretical lens (e.g., Lisa Melonçons performative phenomenology) and methodology (e.g., Norman K. Denzins Feminist Communitarian Model) and contributes to conversations surrounding femaleness, femininity, women's health challenges, and advocacy, as located in RHM scholarship and related fields.

Weight: 422g
Dimension: 239 x 159 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781666905502