Trashing the System: Social Movement, Intersectional Rhetoric, and Collective Agency in the Young Lords Organization's Garbage Offensive

Abstract

Examining the nascent rhetoric of the Young Lords Organization's (YLO) 1969 ''garbage offensive,'' this essay argues that the long-standing constraints on agency to which they were responding demanded an inventive rhetoric that was decolonizing both in its aim and in its form. Blending diverse forms of discourse produced an intersectional rhetoric that was qualitatively different from other movements at the time. As such, the YLO constructed a collective agency challenging the status quo and, in some ways, foreshadowed more contemporary movement discourses that similarly function intersectionally. Examining the YLO's garbage offensive, then, presents rhetorical scholars with an opportunity to revise our understanding of how marginalized groups craft power through rhetoric.The colonized man [sic] who writes for his people ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope. 1[W]e need to develop critical theories of Latino politics. Arguably, the main task for such a theoretical practice should be to devise, from within the movements and/or Darrel Enck-Wanzer is a doctoral candidate in the

Memories of Movement in a Postfeminist Context: Conservative Fusion in the Rhetoric of Tammy Bruce and “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger

“…Revisiting the essay's first section, a more social scientific view posits social movements as preexisting social struggle that instrumentally make use of rhetoric to fulfill persistent needs (see, for instance, Simons, 1970;Stewart, 1980). A more hermeneutic view conceives of social movements as the outcome of struggle, evident through shifts in meaning or discourse over time (see, for instance, DeLuca, 1999;Enck-Wanzer, 2006;McGee, 1980;Sillars, 1980). One of the main implications of a movement-as-meaning approach, then, is to accept that movements are rhetorical ''all the way down.''…”

“…Building upon the idea that discourse or meaning drives social change (DeLuca, 1999;Enck-Wanzer, 2006;Foust, 2010;McGee, 1980;Sillars, 1980), scholars assume that ''a social movement'' is not a given entity, but the outcome of a rhetorical struggle likely to outlast those who ''originally lived'' the movement (Griffin, 2003), and that rhetorical memory of social movements past contributes to the power of movements in the present (Hoerl, 2007). These main assumptions echo scholarship on collective, public, and=or popular memory, which accepts at its core that remembering the past is not a simple retelling of historical events.…”

“…Following our discussion of the intersections of collective memory and movement, and detailed analysis of these two popular conservatives' rhetoric, we consider how Schlessinger's and Bruce's memories of feminism support the turn toward a meaning-centered approach to study social movement (Deluca, 1999;Enck-Wanzer, 2006;McGee, 1980). Bruce's and Schlessinger's rhetoric demonstrates that the meanings created through or about social movement are always subject to change via cultural interaction and reinterpretation.…”

(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship inLa Gran Marcha

“…In his discussion of the Young Lords Party's ''garbage offensive,'' Enck-Wanzer shows how a hybrid rhetorical form reshapes community and challenges conventions of ''US liberal democracy.'' 53 Therefore, performative enactments of citizenship can be called hybrid both in terms of their compound function*as quotidian acts and as acts of civic engagement*and in terms of their hybrid rhetorical form*since many performances of citizenship fuse multiple forms of discourse together. As this review suggests, beyond grounding as situated, staged, and aesthetically marked performance of national belonging, turning scholarly attention to discourses of citizenship and national identity necessitates attention to the hybrid functions and rhetorical forms of this rhetoric.…”

The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control: Impact in Scholarly Works

“…Examples of these discussions continue in the works of Michael McGee (1975) as to what constitutes a movement analysis; the range of confrontational rhetoric (Murphy, 1992); the concept of criticism as organic rather than a dichotomy (Stewart, Smith and Denton, 1984;Darsey, 1991); the function of slogans in movements (Steward, Smith and Denton, 1984); or the instrumentality of nonverbal messages (Enck-Wanzer, 2006).…”