A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE XENOFEMINIST MANIFESTO: EXPERTISE, ETHOS, AND PUBLIC MORAL ARGUMENT
In 2014, six women met at a conference in Berlin, which subsequently resulted in them establishing Laboria Cuboniks. The group collectively wrote Xenofeminism: A Politics for the Alienated. The group constructed the document as a manifesto, which sought to advance xenofeminism as a feminism of the future, which advocated for the construction of a new alien form of ethos. I argue that Laboria Cuboniks’s manifesto is a case study that offers new potential insights into the study of ethos and public moral argument. This project examines the ethos Laboria Cuboniks as an appropriation of what Robert Merton defines as the ethos of science. The manifesto argues for a new form of feminism that affirms the praxis of gender hacking, which they describe as individuals using technology as a means of altering their human source code. This project seeks to illustrate that the manifesto seeks to establish a new approach to public moral argument.
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