Title: Role of the Leader in Social Movements – Accessing Rhetoric
Headings: Role of the Leader in Social Movements
Role of the Leader in Social Movements
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Content: There is no leader, rhetor, or expert. And the goal is to make the personal political, “to create awareness (through shared experiences) that what were thought to be personal deficiencies and individual problems are common and shared, a result of their position as women” (400). Here the differences of women’s rhetoric become clearer: rejecting a singular expert leader, valuing narrative and personal experience, risking self-exposure, emphasizing dialogue. And so, she concludes, the rhetoric of women’s liberation is ultimately an oxymoron: It is a genre without a rhetor, a rhetoric in search of an audience, that transforms traditional argumentation into confrontation, that “persuades” by “violating the reality structure” but that presumes a consubstantiality so radical that it permits the most intimate of identifications. It is a “movement” that eschews leadership, organizational cohesion, and the transactions typical of mass persuasion. Finally, of course, women’s liberation is baffling because there is no clear answer to the recurring question, “What do women want?” On one level, the answer is simple; they want what every person wants—dignity, respect, the right to self-determination, to develop their potentials as individuals.