The (Parkland) kids are alright. Issue 1 (March 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Eckstein, Justin
• Other Names: Conley Donovan guest-editor.; Burroughs Benjamin guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Communication and the public. Volume 5:Issue 1/2(2020)
• Page Start: 26
• Page End: 34
• Publication Date: 2020-03
• Subjects: Badiou -- Parkland -- rhetorical ethics -- rhetorical situation -- school shootings; Communication -- Periodicals; Communication -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2
• DOI: 10.1177/2057047320950630
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2057-0473

Abstract

Wounds materialize in the wake of the event, when rhetoric inadequately indexes what is present in a situation. Such a position bypasses ethics from the transcendental ought or the purely descriptive is to an ethics grounded in an immanent occurrence. To give an example of this kind of rhetorical ethics, I turn to an example of a recent wound, the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the pathology of gun violence has created a wound that shattered our rhetorical sensorium. In the immediate aftermath, Emma Gonzales, a student and survivor of the Parkland shooting, seized upon this perspective on the wound to forge a new figure, the Parkland Kid, and with it new lines of argument. I argue her capacity to turn a wounding into a new subject illustrates a new rhetorical ethics that is inclusive; she became a subject of the shooting, the new Parkland Kid, that anyone is welcome to join. My contribution departs from the wound as a damaged attachment for its understanding as a productive force.