Description
In this study, I examine Hollow Eve, a non-binary queer drag artist who disrupts heteronormative spaces. I employ a queer rhetorical lens, suggesting that Hollow Eve’s testimony and image stills from social sites disrupt queer drag. More specifically, I rely on José Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentification theory to exemplify how Hollow Eve uses their performative body to survive against normative drag presentation. I posit that Hollow Eve’s testimony and images present an ambiguous rhetorical agency through the framework of Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. The chapter provides context to Hollow Eve’s purpose as a drag performer who yearns to dismantle dominant ideology. In the second chapter, I assess Hollow Eve’s online ephemeral digitized performance. I generate a conversation that digital archives hold rhetorical value by extending Baz Kershaw’s understanding of the spectacle that establishes a “wow factor” while simultaneously advocating for societal change through activism. Furthermore, I assert Hollow Eve’s embodied performance argues for change. I incorporate Kevin Michael Deluca’s assertion that bodies hold the power to argue. Through this chapter and the utilization of Kershaw and DeLuca’s concepts, Hollow Eve’s enactment represents an online digitized artifact that contains richness to analyze. In my final chapter, I communicate that digitized performative artifacts on social sights need to be integrated into the classroom. I address that first-year composition courses are heavily plagued by heteronormativity, questioning whether queer pedagogy can exist through these dominant heteronormative structures. Through these conversations, I extend on Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes article, “Flattening Effects: Composition’s Multicultural Imperative and the Problem of Narrative Coherence,” positing that the author’s miss the opportunity to showcase that queer digitized artifacts, such as Hollow Eve, can hold value in the classroom. Additionally, I create a scavenger activity to examine Hollow Eve’s digitized performance, extending Stacey Waite’s article, “Cultivating the Scavenger: A Queerer Feminist Future for Composition and Rhetoric.” Through the incorporation of Waite, I argue that this scavenger method can be applied to the examination of digitized artifacts as well in addition to composing writing assignments.
