Walking and the Reinvention of Space

Abstract

Through the figure of the walker, this thesis considers the relationship between rhetoric and space, where rhetoric is understood as embodied, performative action and space is considered both as a material artifact and an ideological production. While it is a basic tenet of rhetoric that it always occurs in a given location, only recently have scholars of rhetoric begun to privilege space both as a theoretical lens and as part of everyday rhetorical practice. By positioning the walker as an embodied rhetorical agent in two spaces typical of everyday life in capitalist societies--suburban Iowa Street in Lawrence, Kansas, and a nature park built upon an inoperative coal mine in Newcastle England--this thesis attends to space as it both constrains and enables agency in different spatial milieus.