ABSTRACTTHE QUEER ART & RHETORIC OF CONSENT: THEORIES, PRACTICES, PEDAGOGIESByKathleen Ann LivingstonThe Queer Art & Rhetoric of Consent is a multi-genre collection of nonfiction essays on consent in feminist and queer culture and communities. Through storytelling, grounded in LGBTQ and feminist rhetorics, this project examines the elements of consent across contexts (personal, professional, political). This inquiry into consent makes use of many of the possible voices in nonfiction essays—theoretical, personal, lyric, place-based—attempting to get at the heart of the matter of consent. I draw on community-based theories and histories of consent to position consent as a set of teachable practices for creating more respectful, reciprocal, and accountable relationships. My theoretical framework for understanding consent includes LGBTQ and feminist rhetorics, and community-based theories and pedagogies. I use scholarship, archival research, and literature (essays, memoir, poetry) to develop rhetorical theories of consent that extend popular theories of sexual consent as “no means no” or “yes means yes,” even extending beyond sexual contexts. I explore the tensions between pleasure and danger, which have confounded feminist and LGBTQ communities, causing conflict over differing ideas about the potential of consent. To do so, I trace consent through cultural histories, reflect on the elements of consent in my personal life, and weigh in on debates about consent in higher education and LGBTQ community spaces. Out of these theoretical essays, I develop “Doing it All the Time: A Queer Consent Workshop.” Consent has most often been theorized in terms of its relationship to the element of danger (as in sexual assault policies, or the processes of institutional review and informed consent in research). However, consent actually has a multitude of elements, each of which deserve consideration in developing theories and histories of consent. Some of the elements of consent examined in this collection include: boundaries, desire, being present, power, pleasure, danger, disclosure, risk, and access. My findings introduce complexities to community-based theories and histories of consent, developing consent beyond the sexual elements, and inviting people to understand consent as a set of practices we can be doing all the time. Examining consent across multiple contexts reveals consent to be more than a negotiation among individuals being aware of their power, privilege, and desires, and deciding to say yes or no to sex. This project also has implications for community-based research and teaching, in terms of how academics approach consent in research and teaching relationships. Examining consent in feminist and LGBTQ community spaces means tracing theories and histories of consent in the Sex Wars, which are largely unfamiliar to scholars in Rhetoric and Writing Studies. This project invites Rhetoric and Writing Studies to take queer theories and histories of consent into account, respecting and valuing them as central.
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