Limbless marble statue centered in front of a multicolored dark background. Black title and author name handwritten across the statue torso. Limbless marble statue centered in front of a multicolored dark background. Black title and author name handwritten across the statue torso. Limbless marble statue centered in front of a multicolored dark background. Black title and author name handwritten across the statue torso.

Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 176
Illustrations: 20 b&w halftones

Rhetoric & Communication
 paperback
 ebook
 hardcover
 Movement Rhetoric Rhetoric's Movements
 Forthcoming
 Books
 Women's & Gender Studies
 Open Access Ebook

Affective Rhetorics

Reembodying Circulation in Digital Spaces

Jessica L. Ouellette

Paperback
978-1-64336-695-1
Published: Aug 20 2026

$29.99

Hardcover
978-1-64336-694-4
 Published: Aug 20 2026

$74.99

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Ebook
978-1-64336-696-8
 Published: Aug 20 2026

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OA Ebook
978-1-64336-696-8
 Published: Aug 20 2026

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The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of University of South Carolina Libraries

Illuminates how power circulates through affective networks and digital infrastructures

In March 2013, 19-year-old Tunisian citizen Amina Sboui posted two photographs on social media—topless with feminist slogans written on her chest—in response to policies curtailing women's rights. Her post sparked a series of feminist protest events that would become the subject of news articles, blogs, and social media posts around the globe. As the images and commentary circulated online, so too did bodily related rhetorics.

In Affective Rhetorics Jessica L. Ouellette uses this movement to explore how affect—bodily associations, responses, reactions, and orientations—drives digital discourse and reshapes our social and bodily relations online. Using the tools of transnational feminist rhetoric, Ouellette investigates the affective economies that underpin the circulation of rhetoric and power across digital platforms, revealing how feeling operates as both fuel and currency. By identifying the affective energies that sustain or disrupt online movements, she offers a framework for understanding and transforming the rhetorical currents that shape contemporary digital life.



Jessica L. Ouellette is associate professor of English and women and gender studies, and the director of writing programs at the University of Southern Maine. She is coeditor of Feminist Connections: Rhetoric and Activism Across Time, Space, and Place.

"Affective Rhetorics demonstrates how embodied affect proliferates political confrontations that, over time, gravitate toward uniformity, even as a potent rhetorical remainder lingers. Its stress on digital and affective embodiment offers an exciting approach to understanding transnational feminisms."—Catherine Chaput, Fordham University, author of Market Affect and the Rhetoric of Political Economic Debates

"Ouellette's incisive analysis shows that embodiment is central to digital circulation and its effects, equipping us to better understand and intervene in contemporary rhetorical ecologies."—Jennifer Nish, Michigan Technological University, author of Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics