TY - BOOK

T1 - Autonomy’s double bind

T2 - The rhetorical intersection of geopolitics and biopolitics in Danish media coverage of Faroese abortion rights

AU - Nolsøe, Turið

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This thesis explores the rhetorical intersection of biopolitics and geopolitics in the form of Danish media coverage of the Faroese abortion rights situation. Expanding Nathan Stormer’s theory on abortion as a sign of pathology or marker of civilisation in order to encompass the cross-national and imperial discourse of the Faroese position in the Danish kingdom, it is argued that this case sheds light on the colonial logics of journalism which address reproductive and sexual rights issues in the Faroe Islands.Transporting Allison Prasch’s rhetorical theory of deixis to a situation defined bymediated rhetoric, the analysis is organised into three chapters focusing on Time, Place and Authority, which address how temporal discourse, place-based rhetoric and participating rhetors’ authority is discussed and connects rhetorical audiences to the political system of the Danish kingdom. The overall conclusion is that journalism on the Faroese abortion rights situation addresses a Danish public, rendering the relationship between the countries as imperial, since the Faroese body politic is negated as audience and in terms of both bodily and national autonomy.It is argued that the analysed artefacts enact a forum for deliberation on politics in the kingdom rarely found elsewhere and not in physical form, and this focus on the discursive dimension of the Danish kingdom underscores how the Faroese position is represented as colonial in a manner which argues for an approach to colonial discourse as separate from the material circumstances it usually is attached to. Separate in the sense, that the issues this thesis reveals lie in the rhetorical application of this discourse, which ultimately defeats the purposes it could enact — securing bodily autonomy and respecting national autonomy — but instead it creates a double bind in that the problems lie at a communicative level. These problems at the communicative level, are emphasised by the structural logics of abortion rhetoric, general discourse of the Danish kingdom and the dynamics of journalism, but can be amended by including ethnographic principles in practices of representation and positionality.

AB - This thesis explores the rhetorical intersection of biopolitics and geopolitics in the form of Danish media coverage of the Faroese abortion rights situation. Expanding Nathan Stormer’s theory on abortion as a sign of pathology or marker of civilisation in order to encompass the cross-national and imperial discourse of the Faroese position in the Danish kingdom, it is argued that this case sheds light on the colonial logics of journalism which address reproductive and sexual rights issues in the Faroe Islands.Transporting Allison Prasch’s rhetorical theory of deixis to a situation defined bymediated rhetoric, the analysis is organised into three chapters focusing on Time, Place and Authority, which address how temporal discourse, place-based rhetoric and participating rhetors’ authority is discussed and connects rhetorical audiences to the political system of the Danish kingdom. The overall conclusion is that journalism on the Faroese abortion rights situation addresses a Danish public, rendering the relationship between the countries as imperial, since the Faroese body politic is negated as audience and in terms of both bodily and national autonomy.It is argued that the analysed artefacts enact a forum for deliberation on politics in the kingdom rarely found elsewhere and not in physical form, and this focus on the discursive dimension of the Danish kingdom underscores how the Faroese position is represented as colonial in a manner which argues for an approach to colonial discourse as separate from the material circumstances it usually is attached to. Separate in the sense, that the issues this thesis reveals lie in the rhetorical application of this discourse, which ultimately defeats the purposes it could enact — securing bodily autonomy and respecting national autonomy — but instead it creates a double bind in that the problems lie at a communicative level. These problems at the communicative level, are emphasised by the structural logics of abortion rhetoric, general discourse of the Danish kingdom and the dynamics of journalism, but can be amended by including ethnographic principles in practices of representation and positionality.

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - Autonomy’s double bind

PB - Københavns Universitet

CY - København

ER -