Transnational Feminist Rhetorics and Gendered Leadership in Global Politics by Richards Rebecca S.;Dingo Rebecca;

Author:Richards, Rebecca S.;Dingo, Rebecca;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is this “very real sense” of the CWWL as an organization as a living, speaking, writing person that this chapter investigates. The conclusion of this analysis demonstrates just how difficult it is to create a “very real sense” of a person from a group of highly powerful, divergently located geopolitical leaders, as demonstrated by the shifting location of the CWWL’s home base.

But how does a corporate rhetor rhetorically function for an organization such as the CWWL?[28] Generally speaking, the monolithic corporate rhetor is one strategy organizations use to manage the multiple identities represented by its members. As Cheney explains, “organizational rhetoric is understood here in terms of ‘managing’ multiple identities, for this is the rhetorical challenge ever facing individuals and organizations in a complex postindustrial society.”[29] The manner in which organizations manage the identities of “natural” people is often called organizational rhetoric. Cheney identifies the roots of organizational rhetoric in the scholarship of Kenneth Burke and Michel Foucault, looking at how people (dis)indentify with the values and messages of given organizations (see chapter 1). The example that Cheney provides is that of S.C. Johnson’s branding strategy of the phrase, “a family company”—a logo that attempts to anthropomorphize this U.S. corporation into something that is as everyday and embodied as a family. A public either identifies or disassociates itself with this anthropocentric metaphor. In this example, S.C. Johnson’s organizational rhetoric attempts to corral the diverse identities of its clients, employees, and administration into a metaphorical family that interacts through consumerism and services, which is a way to internally manage the identities that compose the organization. But likewise, this strategy also serves as external organizational rhetoric in that the family metaphor either creates a humanized persona or transforms the abstract organization into a unified and humanistic entity.[30]

So then, how do organizational and communication theorists explain the fact that organizations both allow for and empower identities while at the same time seeking to “manage” them? Why do organizations seek to unify natural human bodies and identities into a corporate rhetor whose humanism is created metaphorically? Cheney argues that questions about the rhetorical situation, such as these above, become complicated when the corporate person is invoked.[31] To clarify some of these complications, I analyze how the CWWL has attempted to create a public, identifiable corporate rhetor to humanize its organizational structure. Specifically, I describe the visual, organizational rhetoric of the CWWL, analyzing its efforts to create a highly visible corporate person from the collective of very differently embodied individuals.

As a means of contextualizing my analysis of the CWWL materials and organizational rhetoric, the next section provides a brief overview of the CWWL and its former affiliation with the Aspen Institute. As portrayed on its former website, the CWWL at first glance appears to be an initiative created to further the goals and work of the Aspen Institute. However, upon deeper investigation, the origins of the CWWL are actually much more humanistic and feminist than the machinations of an organizational think tank, which partially

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