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USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
USF Graduate Theses and Dissertations
3-9-2023
Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a
Theoretical Framework for Marginalized Communities
Justiss Wilder Burry
University of South Florida
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Marginalized Communities" (2023). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
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Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a Theoretical Framework for
Marginalized Communities
by
Justiss Wilder Burry
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition
Department of English
College of Arts and Sciences
University of South Florida
Major Professor: Lisa Melonçon, Ph.D.
J. Blake Scott, Ph.D.
José Ángel Maldonado, Ph.D.
Jeffrey A. Bennett, Ph.D.
Date of Approval:
March 2, 2023
Keywords: rhetorical theory, HIV disclosure laws, rhetoric of health and medicine research
methodologies, LGBTQ+ communities
Copyright © 2023, Justiss Wilder Burry
Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without the continued support and help
from the following incredible people who helped me on this journey.
To community participants that enthusiastically helped me create and carry out this
research project in supportive and generous ways: Thank y’all and remember, when they go low,
leave them there.
To my Committee Chair, advisor, mentor, and friend: Dr. Lisa Melonçon. On February
9th, 2019, when I came to learn more about the program, you said to me, “I will always support
you and every graduate student that I potentially (the way you say the word) can.” I can truly say
you kept your word. To reiterate what I said when you won a national mentoring award from
RHM, “When you are mentored by Lisa you don’t only feel supported...you feel celebrated.”
Thank you, Lisa, and cheers. I’ll just keep 🐢’in along.
To Dr. J. Blake Scott: I wrote the following in my MA thesis acknowledgments, “To J.
Blake Scott, for your vital role in helping me find this field and helping me every day with not
only professional successes but personal ones too.” I’d like to double down on that statement and
add, “You are an amazing human and I’m lucky to have your continued support and friendship.”
To each Committee Member: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I wouldn’t have been
able to finish this project and consider future ones without y’all.
To my academic friends: Thanks for keeping me focused when all I wanted to do at times
was stop writing. Particular shout out to K.M. for being a constant source of laughter and writing
motivation, to J.G. for your positive infectious attitude and opening my eyes to Big Milk, and to
T.Z. for always letting me come over and happy hour into the wee mornings.
To my partner, Jerrett: This journey would have sucked without you. Your constant
support and words of encouragement were what I looked forward to everyday. Thank you, pooh
bear. Now it’s your turn. J
To my family: Y’all supported me throughout this journey, and I couldn’t be more
thankful to all of you--even if what I do may still be unclear, lol.
To my dog: Pepper. Yes, to my dog, Pepper, who always wanted to go on a walkie so I
could clear my head and relax between writing dissertation drafts.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ....................................................................................................................................i
List of Figures................................................................................................................................. ii
List of Acronyms ........................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract...........................................................................................................................................iv
Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
My Journey Finding Mētis .................................................................................................. 1
Brief History of HIV/AIDS ..................................................................................... 4
RHM Work and HIV/AIDS......................................................................... 8
Purpose and Research Questions ......................................................................................... 9
Significance of This Study ................................................................................................ 10
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 13
Chapter Two: Building the Theory of Collective Mētis ................................................................ 14
Publics and Counterpublics in Rhetoric ............................................................................ 15
Rhetoric and the Law............................................................................................. 18
What is Mētis? ................................................................................................................... 22
Mētis in Rhetorical Studies ................................................................................... 24
Building the Concept of Collective Mētis ............................................................. 29
Rhetorical Collective Agencies ................................................................. 31
Translative State ........................................................................................ 34
The Trickster-body as a Community Actant ............................................. 36
Actantcy and the Trickster............................................................. 37
Bodies and Embodiment................................................................ 38
Understanding the Trickster .......................................................... 39
Visual Representation of Collective Mētis ................................................ 42
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 45
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 46
Community-based Research .............................................................................................. 48
The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine ................................................................... 50
Positionality ........................................................................................................... 51
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 54
Interviews .............................................................................................................. 55
Textual Analysis .................................................................................................... 59
Approach to Analysis ........................................................................................................ 61
Primary Codes ....................................................................................................... 62
Rhetorical Collective Agencies ................................................................. 64
Translative State ........................................................................................ 65
Trickster-body as Community actant ........................................................ 66
Secondary Codes ................................................................................................... 67
Limitations ............................................................................................................. 69
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 70
Chapter Four: Findings .................................................................................................................. 72
Summary Keywords .......................................................................................................... 73
Partner.................................................................................................................... 74
Status ..................................................................................................................... 74
Sex(ual).................................................................................................................. 74
HIV ........................................................................................................................ 75
Community ............................................................................................................ 75
Positive .................................................................................................................. 76
Law ........................................................................................................................ 76
Florida HIV Disclosure Law ............................................................................................. 77
Rhetorical Collective Agencies ......................................................................................... 81
Choices Within the Community ............................................................................ 81
Agency and PrEP ....................................................................................... 82
Agency and PLHIV ................................................................................... 83
Disclosure Accountability ......................................................................... 85
Burden on PLHIV to Disclose ....................................................... 86
Burden on Both to Discuss ............................................................ 87
Burden on Negative Partner to Ask ............................................... 87
Doesn’t Matter Either Way ........................................................... 88
Inconclusive/Not Sure ................................................................... 88
Translative State ................................................................................................................ 89
Preferred Modality in the Community .................................................................. 90
Online Modality......................................................................................... 90
In Person Modality .................................................................................... 91
Mix of Modalities ...................................................................................... 92
Trickster-body as Community Actant ............................................................................... 94
Participants’ Knowledge about HIV Disclosure Law ........................................... 94
Participants Knew the FL HIV Disclosure Law ........................................ 95
Participants Knew Disclosure Was Required ............................................ 96
Participants Didn’t Know HIV Disclosure Was Required ........................ 98
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 98
Chapter Five: Discussion of Findings ......................................................................................... 100
Rhetorical Agency and Its Importance ............................................................................ 101
Choices within the Community ........................................................................... 102
Collective Mētis: A Successful Community Tool ........................................................... 103
Ways of Speaking about Intimate Partner Communication ................................ 106
Even Identifying the Trickster is Tricky ......................................................................... 107
Trickster Creating Publics and Counterpublics ................................................... 108
Trickster as Preventative HIV Medications ............................................ 111
One Size Trickster Does Not Fit All ........................................... 113
Negative Trickster Power Potential: A Cautionary Tale ......................... 114
A Dangerous and Hegemonic Trickster ...................................... 115
Technological Modalities Shape Community Participation ............................................ 117
Safety Concerns Alter Modalities ....................................................................... 117
Relationship Goals Determine Modality ............................................................. 118
HIV Disclosure Overlaps in Modalities .............................................................. 118
Ethics and Community Engagement ............................................................................... 119
Theory Building as a Research Tool in RHM ................................................................. 120
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 122
Chapter Six: Implications and Conclusions ................................................................................ 124
Implications of this Dissertation ...................................................................................... 125
Researcher Implications for RHM....................................................................... 126
Ethics and Community Research Methodologies................................................ 127
Ethical Implications ................................................................................. 127
Community Research Methodologies ..................................................... 129
Theory Building as a Creative and Effective Tool .............................................. 130
Future Research ............................................................................................................... 131
Comparison of HIV Disclosure Laws by State ................................................... 132
Mitigating Negative Effects of Trickster ............................................................. 133
Researcher Positionality ...................................................................................... 133
Collective Mētis in Myriad Contexts .................................................................. 134
Modalities and Potential Intimate Partner Communication ................................ 135
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 136
References ................................................................................................................................... 139
Appendix A: Participant Recruitment Flyer ................................................................................ 156
Appendix B: Participant Interview Questions ............................................................................. 157
Appendix C: IRB Exemption Letter ............................................................................................ 159
List of Tables
Table 1.
The primary codes used to test the theory of collective mētis .............................. 63
Table 2.
Total of categories for disclosure accountability................................................... 86
Table 3.
Total of preferred modality in communication ..................................................... 90
Table 4.
Table of participants and their knowledge of FL HIV disclosure law .................. 95
i
List of Figures
Figure 1.
A visual diagram of the theory of collective mētis ............................................... 43
Figure 2.
Visual of thematic coding process ........................................................................ 67
Figure 3.
A visual representation of the theory of collective mētis.................................... 105
Figure 4.
Word cloud of most words used by participants ................................................. 106
ii
List of Acronyms
RHM
CDC
RCO
TS
HIV
PLHIV
AIDS
PrEP
PEP
SPLC
Rhetoric of health and medicine
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Rhetorical collective agencies
Translative state
Human immunodeficiency virus
Person living with HIV
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
Pre-exposure prophylaxis
Post-exposure prophylaxis
Southern Poverty Law Center
iii
Abstract
This LGBTQ+ rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) community-based research
explores the ways community members and queer community participants communicate about
potential intimate partner selection in Central Florida. The dissertation introduces the theoretical
framework of “collective mētis” as a way to analyze and discuss community communication
against Florida’s required HIV disclosure laws that attempt to medicalize this and control this
community’s intimate partner selection. Research questions include: 1) How do people in
counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential intimate partner desires to
others in the community including the types of disclosures they express and negotiate, and how?
2) How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect one
another and in what ways? 3) Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in
various ways, how does this community employ individual and collective rhetorical and
discursive practices that disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure
practices? More particularly, how are HIV disclosure laws circumvented? 4) To what extent are
folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of language practices within the
community? This qualitative research study answers these research questions and argues that
laws such as HIV disclosure laws in Florida attempt to regulate bodies, particularly queer ones in
Central Florida. Participants use the practice of collective mētis to resist these laws and empower
the community. Members of the community create a trickster-body that allows them to
circumvent these laws when selecting a potential intimate partner. The trickster, or the discursive
formation created collectively by community members, oscillates through publics and
iv
counterpublics in order to best serve community values, norms, and expectations that often
include not disclosing a positive HIV status because of discursive and preventative ways around
law language. This study then argues for a closer examination of theory-building as an effective
community-based research methodology in rhetorical studies and RHM. Future research includes
ethical implications of community-based research and comparing state laws, as technical
documents, to HIV disclosure requirements for LGBTQ+ communities. Additionally, this
research sets up future examinations of the trickster-body in rhetorical studies, the role of
researcher positionality in RHM, testing the theory of collective mētis in other non-academic
contexts and connecting theory to practice, and the role of modalities reflected in marginalized
community customs.
v
Chapter One: Introduction
The cuttle-fish is the most cunning because these types of creatures are
“so rich in mētis they can only be taken by their own traps.”
-Detienne & Vernant (1978, p. 39).
What does a cuttlefish have to do with the classical Greek historical concept of mētis?12
Well, as most of this dissertation analyzes mētis and its rhetorical meaning, the cuttlefish is one
of the most rhetorical animals because of its cunning ability to trap and trick other marine life.
This cunning intelligence is a central focus of this dissertation which starts with how I ended up
writing and developing the theory of collective mētis to help empower marginalized
communities. This chapter begins with mētis and its research potential and goes on to argue for a
collective theory. Next, this chapter describes the brief history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as it
relates to rhetorical studies and the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) subfield. The chapter
ends with the purpose and significance of this research study before previewing the next chapter.
My Journey Finding Mētis
I came out as gay during my senior year of high school. In Alabama, we went to church
every Sunday. This was required and not optional. After church, while others went to Shoney's
Restaurant to eat, we went home because we couldn't afford to eat out and going out required
others to serve our family on Sunday. This was against Mormon doctrine. I only found four gay
people who couldn’t go out on Sunday and shared my experiences being gay in rural Alabama.
1
I am aware of the Canadian indigenous group, métis, but this dissertation focus is on the classical Greek concept.
The spelling follows current practice in APA formatting; the accent is meant to help with ease of reading although
there are other ways to spell the word.
2
1
They became my whole world. We discussed gay issues affecting the broader community when
we could find resources via dial up internet or through XY magazine. The only thing we had
were these conversations with one another. They became my whole support system. Then, our
friend Tom3 got a cold, and it didn't go away. I knew Tom was sick but, in my community, no
one knew what HIV was. Tom got worse over time and one Sunday on my way to church I
received a voicemail. Tom had died. He was 23. When Tom died, I realized the community I was
a part of needed to talk about HIV and treatment although I was mortified at the thought of this
disease and its effects on my friends. The LGBTQ+ community I was a part of at the time was
very supportive, and we all came together to celebrate him. Out of these meetings and with
Tom’s mom, we demanded answers. We learned that local doctors would not treat him and
clinics wouldn’t see him because he was HIV positive. This experience lit a fierce commitment
in me to help communities and community members who didn’t have the medical services they
needed.
I never forgot about Tom, and as I pursued my undergraduate degree, I never lost the
desire to help marginalized communities, particularly LGBTQ+ ones. In college I began to study
hegemonic power structures and the ways they were intertwined with stories. I was especially
interested in Greek and Roman myths that included some type of power struggle. As I completed
my undergraduate degree and entered graduate school, I found myself drawn to rhetorical theory
and writing. I couldn’t help but notice a correlation between classical Greek concepts and Greek
myths. As I continued my education, I looked for ways to connect these ideas. Then, a class in
my Master’s program did just that--it introduced me to a relatively new subfield in rhetorical
studies: the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM).
3
This is a pseudonym as this dissertation is public knowledge.
2
As I read through issues and thoughts around RHM as a scholarly field, I stumbled on
work by Jay Dolmage (2009) and was captivated by the story of Medusa and how this scholar
was using the term mêtis.4 I came to realize that Zeus had a wife prior to the well-known Hera.
The daughter of the almighty Titan, Ocean, Metis was famed as the most cunning of all the Gods
and Goddesses, which fascinated Zeus. It wasn’t long until The Fates, soothsayers with the
ability to see and interpret the future, predicted that Zeus would be overthrown should Metis give
birth to their daughter, Athena. Armed with her cunning and polymorphous body, she was able to
evade Zeus for a while; however, as most things in the ancient Greek tradition, Zeus caught her.
The version of the story that I find most interesting and most relevant to this dissertation is that
Zeus allegedly swallowed Metis which imbued him with the Metis’ cunning intelligence as she
continued to live in his head (Dolmage, 2006). Thus, he wasn’t the most powerful of the Gods
and Goddesses because of his brute strength; au contraire, he was the most powerful because of
his cunning intelligence to outmaneuver and outsmart the others on Olympus (Detienne &
Vernant, 1978).
Given my queer community work and the LGBTQ+ community that I am actively a part
of in Central Florida,5 I wanted to know how this type of cunning intelligence may or may not be
used in queer spaces and by queer folx.6 The existing scholarly literature did not offer what I
needed to understand these differing aspects of my own experiences. That is, I couldn’t find
anything that really got to how mētis could help marginalized communities. So, I began to
research and read about mētis, community-based research, and their relationships. Engaging with
4
There are a lot of different ways to spell this term, but I am using the spelling mētis because that is how it’s
spelled most often in the texts I read; plus, I want to make sure it’s clearly related to, but different than, Dolmage’s
meaning.
5
Central Florida reflects the broader areas of Orlando and Tampa, FL and is based on location.
6
This term is often used in queer communities to value members’ preferred pronouns and not assume gender
identity.
3
scholarship, I noticed that folx who discussed mētis often did so in individual terms. It seemed to
me this classical Greek concept contained the potential to save others in the community so that
other Toms wouldn’t have funerals at age 23. That’s what this dissertation aims to do as its main
purpose.
Brief History of HIV/AIDS
This section is intended to give context to a brief history of HIV/AIDS and its relevance
to this dissertation project. It is important to give this context as there are many different angles
for approaching this topic; however, the main goal of this section is to lead from a brief history
of HIV/AIDS to the relevance of it in current RHM work where I intend to situate this
dissertation.
Although it’s not entirely clear how the HIV virus came to the US, there are a lot of
theories from scientists that argue colonization is part of how the virus spread through those
traveling back and forth.7 HIV was noticed by epidemiologists in the United States as early as
1930, but it wasn’t attended to until the 1970s as people living with hemophilia started to
develop pneumonia associated with what is now known as AIDS (Bayer, 1999). In the 1990s,
HIV was labeled as the “gay disease” colloquially and often referred to as such in the media due
to the large population of gay men contracting the virus through (assumed and reported)
unprotected sex. In. response to the fear of HIV/AIDS8 spreading in the US, a lot of states moved
to add addendums to their already existing STD disclosure laws. As a result, HIV disclosure laws
7
Another theory traces the origins of HIV to a remote place in West-central Africa, Cameroon. Some scientists
believe that a strand from the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) from infected chimpanzees transferred to
humans as the chimpanzees were hunted and eaten (CDC, 2022b).
8
While HIV/AIDS are oftentimes grouped together, they are related but aren’t the same things.HIV, or human
immunodeficiency virus, is a virus that attacks one’s white blood cells (CD4, or T-cells), and if one’s CD4 count
falls below 25 copies per cell, then the person is moved into the AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome)
category.
4
are part of a bigger group of laws that attempted to protect and safeguard the public and
slow/stop the HIV infection rate. Since funding was belated for HIV/AIDS research far after the
virus’ epidemiology was isolated, it was fear, panic, and stigma that overwhelmingly drove the
exigency for these laws.
Federal governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Public Health Services (PHS) began
implementing policies that the federal government felt would assist in slowing the HIV
transmission rate. These policies bolstered public support to protect against what many felt was
“the gay disease” so that their particular family was safe. This stigma still exists in the states that
keep laws, such as HIV disclosure laws active. According to Stephanie Pappas (2018) at the
American Psychological Association, “These laws rarely take into account the factors that affect
actual transmission risk, such as condom use or adherence to antiretroviral therapy” (n.p), yet
they continue to exist as there is little federal guidelines that recommend what states should do
with these laws. The main issue with a lot of these laws is that they don’t consider two vital
medical advancements: 1) A person who is undetectable or 2) a person taking pre-exposure
prophylaxis regularly. Undetectable means that viral copies of HIV are below 25 copies per cell
and the exact number of copies can’t be detected by bloodwork; thus, the carrier has less than a
1% chance to transmit HIV to a negative partner. According to the CDC (2022c), “If you take
HIV medicine and get and keep an undetectable viral load, you have effectively no risk of
transmitting HIV to an HIV-negative partner through sex.” In short, undetectable means
untransmittable. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a preventative medication that highly
limits the amount of risk negative persons have when engaging in unprotected sex or sharing
5
intravenous needles.9 The most popular form of PrEP is a pill called Truvada, although there are
similar PrEP medications on the market.10 The CDC (2022d) notes that PrEP significantly
reduces the risk associated with contracting HIV if the user of a PrEP medication takes the
medicine daily without missing doses. In short, this method also prevents the user from
contracting HIV even if the partner is positive and unmedicated (or detectable). In some states
like Florida, however, lawmakers haven’t updated disclosure laws based on scientific research
and explanations of exposure risks.
The CDC (2022g) reports there are 37 states that have sexually transmitted disease (STD)
disclosure laws, or laws that designate that people who knowingly have an STD must selfdisclose their STD to a partner before engaging in sex. David Ovalle (2013), an activist lawyer in
South Florida, wrote in the Miami Herald that Florida is one state that has HIV disclosure laws
that specifically “criminalize or control behaviors that can potentially expose another person to
HIV.” These laws often taxonomize differences in types of sexual engagement (i.e., intercourse,
oral sex, and other forms of sexual activity). The CDC (2022g) identifies four specific types of
laws in relation to HIV disclosure laws, but the two most relevant to this dissertation are the
following:
1. HIV-specific laws that criminalize or control behaviors that can potentially expose
another person to HIV.
2. Sexually transmitted disease (STD), communicable, contagious, infectious disease
(STD/communicable/infectious disease) laws that criminalize or control behaviors that
9
For the scope of this paper, only PrEP and those engaging in unprotected sexual practices will be addressed.
Descovy is another FDA approved PrEP medication. See CDC (2022) HIV Basics.
10
6
can potentially expose another person to STDs/communicable/infectious disease. This
might include HIV.
For the first law, there are currently 26 states that employ these types of measures; there are 11
states who fall under the second law category, including Florida.11 According to Florida law,
arresting a person living with HIV (PLHIV)12 who engages in sexual activity without disclosing
their serostatus does not require that an HIV infection occurred “in order for an offender to have
committed criminal transmission of HIV” (The Center for HIV & Law Policy, 2022). Florida is a
state that issues heavy fines and severe punishments for those who don’t disclose any positive
STD but include substantially harsher punishments for HIV-related disclosure from positive
partners. For example, while non-HIV disclosures (including infections such as herpes) carry a
misdemeanor charge with up to $500 in fines, a sole encounter for a PLHIV who doesn’t
disclose HIV is a third-degree felony that carries a five-year sentence and fine up to $5,000.13
A PLHIV can be charged with a first-degree felony if they have multiple partners and
don’t disclose their serostatus; moreover, a PLHIV can also be charged with a first-degree felony
if they engage in multiple encounters with the same person and do not disclose their positive
status. The punishment is a fine of up to $15,000 and the possibility of up to life imprisonment.
Considering the social and cultural punishments of being charged and/or convicted of this law,
the HIV disclosure law in Florida is the only one that has a felony charge associated with it. In
fact, Ovalle (2013), a legal reporter for the Miami Herald noted that “All of these laws are just
11
The following statutes are still in effect as they were re-ratified by the state of Florida in 2020: FLA. STAT.
ANN. §§ 775.082, 775.083, 384.24(2) (2020) and Id. §§ 384.34(5), 775.082 (2020). See Appendix A for the law as
it is written in its entirety.
12
There are many ways to refer to someone who is HIV positive, but the most current term meant to mitigate stigma
is the term, people living with HIV (PLHIV), employed by both the CDC (June 2021) and The Center for HIV Law
& Policy (Jan. 2022). This dissertation will follow this reference when discussing HIV positive people.
13
For a current take on the most recent discussion of HIV criminalization laws, visit this link from The HIV Law &
Policy website.
7
based upon misconceptions about how easy it is to transmit HIV. It’s not that easy.” Ovalle’s
comment is interesting when considering how these types of laws actively attempt to police,
medicalize, and punish those folks who don’t comply with HIV disclosure laws. There has been
research in regard to this thought in RHM studies that point specifically to this issue, which the
next section begins to explore.
RHM Work and HIV/AIDS
While Floridian legislators deny promoting the stigma of PLHIV, the laws speak
otherwise. Arguably, these HIV disclosure laws are examples of the Foucauldian concept of
biopower (Foucault, 1973). This concept argues that those who are in power and governing what
we deem as society should theoretically have the power to determine who lives and dies. This
concept includes the concept of biocitizenry, which is the notion that citizens should want to
protect and intimately care about societal health and well-being over their own. As such,
biocitizenship is a “complex and generative concept that allows scholars to delve deeply into the
intersections of bodies with issues of agency, politics, and resistance in a variety of contexts”
(Johnson et al., 2018, p. 1). In RHM, the idea of biocitizenship is related to many studies
conducted. For example, “chronic citizenship” (Bennett, J.A., 2018) is still important to topics
such as HIV/AIDS in queer spaces and how governmental forces attempt to regulate, through
medicalization, their bodies. In fact, the US continues to ban HIV positive immigrants from
entering the country legally (Chávez, 2018b), which is indicative of biocitizenry conceptions that
are still prominent in the US.
Take, for example, how laws regulating those living with HIV are created, and discourses
situated, to regulate bodies that are perceived as unclean. One clear example is that of blood.
Jeffrey A. Bennett (2009) takes up the issue of queer people who attempt to donate blood and
8
analyzes the discoursal and powerful hegemonic structures that disenfranchise these queer
bodies. J. Bennett illustrates this trend by tracing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and
noting that the “rhetoric of the blood ban entails unique tropes and characteristics, but it can also
offer significant understanding of how blood and body are part of a larger history of segregation,
citizenship, and national identity” (p. 3). Agreeing with this conception of how PLHIV became a
more complex issue, Hoppe (2018) argues that “it is no mistake that authorities responded to the
HIV epidemic with a new punitiveness” (p. 6). In essence, medicalization is not meted out in fair
and equal amounts, with minorities facing the majority of the punishment. This idea is especially
true to queer bodies that attempt to resist laws aimed at controlling them. To this end, PLHIV
face a lot of the same targeted laws as those who wanted to donate blood did in the 1980s, and
RHM has researched these issues; however, while those in RHM like J. Blake Scott (2003)
discuss issues such as how HIV testing can elicit dangerous arguments, there is not a lot of work
in RHM around HIV/AIDS medicalization and the power these communities have to disrupt
forced or attempted forced medicalization., particularly around disclosure This dissertation
intends to extend some of these ideas in RHM as this study leverages PLHIV regulation and
resistance that results from their medicalization.
Purpose and Research Questions
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore and apply a theoretical analytic tool that I’m
building, “collective mētis,” for intimate language between potential partners in a LGBTQ+
community. This inventive research will be used to better elicit sex disclosure practices for queer
and trans folks who chose to engage in sexual relationships with other people through online
LGBTQ+ platforms or in person. Considering the goals of this dissertation led me to consider the
following research questions:
9
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
o What types of disclosures do they express and negotiate, and how?
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
o Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
These research questions will help me determine how collective mētis might be a viable
community theoretical tool that assists marginalized communities empower themselves against
oppressive forces. However, there are two broad limits to this study that are detailed in the
section that follows.
Significance of This Study
This dissertation demonstrates that rhetorical theory and theory building can help
marginalized communities resist oppressive forces through a theory I created, collective mētis.
Building this theory is significant to rhetorical studies because collective mētis and its three key
characteristics can be used as a way to see and analyze discourse in other marginalized
communities. The three characteristics are: rhetorical collective agencies, translative state, and
the trickster-body as a community actant. This dissertation employs collective mētis as a
theoretical community-based analytic tool to test its viability. I do this by studying and
10
interviewing participants in a LGBTQ+ community that I am a part of in Central Florida. I am
investigating how laws, as technical documents, require HIV disclosure prior to intimate
engagement. This inventive research will be used to better understand sex disclosure practices
for queer and trans folks who chose to engage in sexual relationships with other community
members either face-to-face or through online applications.
This dissertation matters to rhetorical studies as some communities are often the most
vulnerable to conceptions of bioeconomic discourses (Foucault, 1977; Rail, 2012) which attempt
to regulate marginalized communities’ rhetorical agentive power. By combining rhetorical
collective agencies, translative state, and the trickster-body as community actant to form the
theory of collective mētis, I contribute to the to the field of rhetoric by arguing that communities
employ collective discursive strategies to usurp laws they don’t agree with such as Florida’s HIV
disclosures laws. Directly building from the field’s interest in agency, this study adds another
layer by arguing that agencies are plural and not singular. This dissertation also argues for closer
attention to community-based research methodologies for communities as a whole and its
members. These comments connect community-based research to issues of ethics and ethical
considerations for researchers working with communities, especially marginalized ones.
Another way this study contributes to rhetorical studies is specifically for RHM
research in employing ethical methodological practices when working with group and
community communication. In the field of rhetorical studies, recent edited collections
(McKinnon et al., 2016; Melonçon & Scott, 2018; Middleton et al., 2011; Rai and Druschke,
2018) suggest that rhetoricians are considering a new emphasis on research methodologies, many
of which involve empirically driven human subjects research with engagement in field sites
and/or communities. Analogous to broadening this interest in expanding research methodologies
11
is a revived interest in studying virtue ethics (e.g. Colton and Holmes, 2018; Duffy, Gallagher,
and Holmes, 2018; Frisicaro-Pawlowski, 2018), which includes how ethics are a key part of
community-based work. However, despite this increased work in research methodologies and
ethical considerations, there are few explicit recent discussions of rhetorical research ethics
(Bivens, 2017; Opel, 2018; McKee & Porter, 2009). In addition, there is a special issue of the
Rhetoric of Health and Medicine that includes a special section on issues of ethics in RHM
research. This special issue begins with the editors “attempt to parse an "ethics in praxis" that is
characterized by situational, embodied, and reflexive orientations rather than by attributes more
common in virtue ethics” (Melonçon, Molloy, & Scott, 2020) and is followed by Melissa Carrion
(2020) and her interactions on online discussion boards including anti-vaccine mothers. Doing so
required Carrion to consider risks around vaccination and her positionality as a new mother
interacting in online community spaces with other mothers. Next, Amy R. Reed (2020) discusses
the ethical implications of how to best work with oppositional groups. In her study, Reed
examined the advice from genetic counselors who advised pregnant women on keeping or
terminating a pregnancy that carries a child with Down syndrome. Sommer Marie Sterud (2020)
also considers the ethical implications of researching an oppositional group such as pro-life and
pro-choice groups. She argues that care-based ethics may be one way to take into account myriad
issues when encountering and researching groups such as these. Lastly, Kristin Marie Bivens &
Candice A. Welhausen (2020) call for RHM researchers to consider ethical questions that may
arise from datasets and how to best share ethical data that frames research projects. My research
extends this special issue by examining community rhetorical efforts and argues that current
RHM research offers enough opportunity for community members to participate alongside the
researcher; so, this study’s secondary aim is to analyze a LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida
12
and its effective community methodologies. This dissertation contributes to RHM by arguing
more attention needs to be paid to rhetorical research ethics and how they inform research
design and methodologies, particularly in already vulnerable communities.
Conclusion
This chapter builds a foundation for how I came to find the concept of mētis and
extend it by creating a community-based theory called collective mētis through my experiences
as a queer person and the law. This chapter also presented a brief history of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic in its relationship to rhetorical studies and the rhetoric of health and medicine scholarly
community specifically. The research questions added here attempt to tease out the goals of
collective mētis and how the three characteristics of this theory can help empower marginalized
communities. Through examining the communication in a local LGBTQ+ community that I’m a
part of, I will demonstrate that collective mētis is a viable and helpful tool for examining
marginalized community communication through its members and the community as a whole. In
order to test this theory, I first have to explain the scholarly works that inform the theory and
how the characteristics therein make collective mētis a useful and worthwhile theory for
communities seeking to empower themselves against oppressive forces.
The next chapter does the following things: 1) situates this study within publics and
counterpublics theory and rhetorics relationship to laws; 2) traces the rhetorical history of mētis;
and 3) introduce the characteristics and rationale that make collective mētis a potentially
successful community analytic tool.
13
Chapter Two: Building the Theory of Collective Mētis
As such, me + tis makes a radical phenomenological statement and poses
a challenge to traditional identity politics, centering the rhetorical nature
of identity and embodiment.”
- Jay Dolmage (2020)
Cheryl Geisler (2004) commented that “As rhetoricians, we generally take as a starting
point that rhetoric involves action. This is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of a rhetorical
approach to discourse” (p. 12). This quote advances the importance of rhetorical studies as a
field and this research study. Within rhetorical studies, the rhetoric of health and medicine
(RHM) is a sub-field that studies rhetoric, health, and medicine. According to Lisa Melonçon et
al. (2020), “Scholars studying RHM argue that the field is concerned not only with the discursive
aspects of health and medicine as a set of discrete practices but also with how healthcare and
medical issues circulate in all the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of our world”
(p. 1). RHM studies is a “polydisciplinary” field encourages scholarship that is “open to
opportunities . . . to make each relationship work” (Segal, 2020, p. ix; emphasis original). To this
relational end, one of the aims of RHM is to better explore and inform how medical practices, in
its various shapes and forms, work within specific contexts through discourse including
community settings. I have a special interest in how communication practices in marginalized
communities are researched. Thus, in this chapter, I bring together different strands of research
related to publics and counterpublics, rhetoric and the law, and the rhetorical concept of mētis.
14
Following this, I end with the need for building a new theoretical model for community
communication, collective mētis.
Publics and Counterpublics in Rhetoric
The theories of publics and counterpublics underscore this research project because of the
useful ways they offer to examine how communities interact with laws that directly affect the
community. The public nature of laws inform how members of marginalized communities follow
or push back against those laws. Here I follow Gerard A. Hauser (1999), Michael Warner (2002),
and Robert Asen (2000; 2004; 2010) in the way they conceive of publics, particularly using
Warner’s (2002) conception which includes the following characteristics:
1. A public is self-organized
2. A public is a relation among strangers
3. The address of public speech is both personal and impersonal
4. A public is constituted through mere attention
5. A public is the social space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse
6. Publics act historically according to the temporality of their circulation
7. A public is poetic world making (pp. 50-83)
These characteristics shed light on understanding what publics are, which are necessary to
understanding the concept of counterpublics. By this, I mean that community-based research and
the theory of collective mētis revolve around community norms, values, and expectations of their
relationship to power. Publics theory holds that power dynamics and its disbursement through
communities is one way to analyze community values. This is not an exception in marginalized
communities and this includes LGBTQ+ communities and issues they face. For example, Geisler
(2004) noted that a generation of young scholars were pushing hard on the concept of rhetorical
15
agency to develop a rhetorical understanding of a wide variety of non-traditional phenomena
such as the gay body as a public statement about HIV/AIDS. Along these same lines, Daniel C.
Brouwer (1998) also wrote about HIV/AIDS and discussed precarity within marginalized
communities such as people living with HIV (PLHIV). While he didn’t specifically name the
concept of counterpublics, his work analyzed HIV/AIDS tattoos and he argued that these tattoos
presented a precarity associated with the publics that were utilized.
While scholars such as Brenton D. Faber (2002) have discussed different types of
community research such as participatory action work and community-based participatory
research (CBPR), another study conducted by Danielle Endres et al. (2016) focused on the
methodologies of working with community members in situ or through direct participation and
observation. There is a direct connection between publics and counterpublics and working with
communities, although they are not exactly the same thing in rhetorical studies.14 While
communities are typically not informed by complete strangers as Warner (2002) argues, they do
create their own discoursal rules which vary from community to community. Rhetorical publics
can offer a useful framework, though, for analyzing the discourse in communities for two
reasons. The first is that rhetorical publics analysis understands that publics are “multiple,
overlapping, and relational” (Campeau, 2019, p. 184), and the second is that this concept affords
a nuanced approach that advocates for social change. It may seem that everyday community
practices should be obvious, but the complex nature of quotidian community work is interesting
in the way publics and counterpublics “reflect the diverse and myriad perspectives, practices, and
publics that co-constitute collective life in the world, often under the radar of, or rarified within,
public archives and discourse” (Rai & Druschke, 2018). A helpful illustration of publics and
14
Community is defined and discussed in relation to this project in the next chapter.
16
counterpublics and the relationship to communities is found in the historical account of the AIDS
activist group, ACT UP. In her book, Sarah Schulman (2021) traces the history of ACT UP
throughout New York from 1987-1993 and examines how people participating in this group
shaped political power for those people living with HIV and AIDS. The book is a great reminder
that communities engage work in myriad ways from one community to another; no queer
community is exactly the same. Publics and counterpublics theory contribute to these concepts
and there has been recent substantive work in the rhetoric of health and medicine that illustrate
the rhetorical effectiveness of these theories. The next section will examine a few key studies in
RHM and their relationship to my research.
There are many scholars in RHM who employ publics and counterpublics in various
ways that inform my research. One of the most important articles advocating for the use of
publics in medical contexts was written by Lisa B. Keränen (2014). She notes, “we [as RHM
researchers] need to assess the multiple ways that publics already interface with biomedical and
health knowledge formation, contestation, decision making, and practices. [. . . ] In so doing, we
can better account for the vital roles that publics play in shaping the contours of biomedicine and
health” (p. 104). Jennifer Malkowski and Lisa Melonçon (2019) advance the relationship of
publics and medicine in their introduction to the RHM journal’s second issue. They claim that
“Importantly, approaching publics from a rhetorical stance can assist the practical needs of
public health as well (p. vii). Jenell Johnson (2016) contributes to rhetorical publics by exploring
the visceral, or the body, boundaries, and intense feelings associated with them, presenting a
study about fluoridation in Berkshire, Massachusetts. Stephanie R. Larson (2018) applies publics
and counterpublics to the concept of rape and bodied boundaries. Gordon R. Mitchell (2004)
argues for rhetoricians to heed how publics can shape the way social movements originate and
17
function. Karma R. Chávez (2011) argues that counterpublic enclaves can use rhetoric to
facilitate positive relationships between queer and immigrant spaces and Catherine H.
Palczewski (2001) relates rhetorical technological advances to social movement rights and
groups. These readings inform this dissertation as a better way to think of communities is their
relationships to publics and counterpublics. However, what hasn’t been explicitly analyzed is
how communities employ and use publics and counterpublics to switch power dynamics between
what they need and how they can achieve discursive goals such as regulating their own laws
within their communities. Publics and counterpublics theory provide a way to understand and to
analyze the communication that happens in the community. The concepts of publics and
counterpublics often include the ways that the community responds to laws that require
medicalization of members.
Rhetoric and the Law
This section starts with history about laws and then connects laws to rhetorical
theory. Law and legal interpretation have a long history dating back to Ovid’s writing in 8 AD
(VerSteeg & Barclay, 2003) as he recounts mythological tales for a judge.15 While the ways that
the law16 is interrupted has advanced with technological advances, laws still regulate societal
norms albeit through various more contemporized means such as technological modalities and
are connected to discourse and language (Goodrich, 2022). Additionally, laws tend to be thought
of as positivist, or as inflexible consistent systems “built into [a] unified hierarchy” (Soboleva,
2022); however, research in legal studies shows that rhetorical interpretation of laws often
involve value judgements, or spaces where statutes are subject to a judge’s interpretation of how
15
This was Hades in classical Greek mythology.
For this dissertation chapter, the words “law” and “statute” are used interchangeably because they both indicate
different sections of the same Florida HIV disclosure law set.
16
18
citizens should act. Connecting these ideas to rhetoric, publics and counterpublics are oftentimes
formed by laws that require some type of action, albeit helpful or harmful to marginalized
communities. Counterpublics, as previously mentioned, form their own operating rules within
these communities (Warner 2002) which have the potential to push against laws that argue for
strict adherence or negative consequences. This relationship tends to connect laws and rhetorical
theory in ways that regulate behavior and discourse. The connection between rhetoric, laws,
publics and counterpublics is predicated on what the goals of the communities are and how these
communities operationalize with, or against, laws. This latter part is key to examining the
rhetorical dimensions of laws in this study.
The existing rhetorical work around law is not extensive, but there are some pieces that
explicitly relate rhetoric and the law. Adding to this body of knowledge, a special issue of
Technical Communication Quarterly, was dedicated to exploring the relationship of the law and
rhetoric. In this special issue, Jessica Reyman and Mary Lay Schuster (2010) argue the collection
addresses “ the difficult question of how technical communication research can aid in the quality
of public life by facilitating the public’s understanding of complex legal processes or
contributing toward more ethical policy making” (p. 2). Supporting this claim, Mark A. Hannah
(2010) writes about a “legal literacy” that he argues technical communicators must start to
consider in order to better understand rhetorical and legal practices. Mike Markel (2010)
analyzes a federal department and concludes that public policy predicated through technical
communication is essential to understanding activity systems. TyAnna Herrington (2010) argues
that with the current fair use laws, technical communicators may find their intellectual property
in the workplace increasingly commodified. This special issue contributes to rhetorical
scholarship by examining the relationship between rhetorical studies and the law. In other words,
19
rhetoric is part of the law as people decide what laws to propose, pass, and veto. These actions
are informed by rhetorical underpinning and change throughout engagement with community
norms, values, and expectations. The most useful aspect of these sources are the potential
connections that connect laws to marginalized communities and conceptions of biomedicine.
This intersection is apropos for RHM researchers to consider the relationship between publics,
counterpublics, and laws within community-based research.
Work in RHM related to rhetoric and the law informs my research because it analyzes
laws and its impact on communities, particularly marginalized ones. Following are some
example studies and their importance to publics and counterpublics theory and the resulting
correlations. In her landmark book, Elizabeth C. Britt (2001) analyzes infertility insurance
company legislation in Massachusetts. She argues that complex law structures often enframe
patient discourse through a legal and social framework. Britt (2006) also notes that rhetorical
spaces such as institutions are regulated by laws that typically predict behaviors and institutional
rules. Arguing that right-to-try discourse in medical contexts ignores the non-human potential of
medical rights, Lisa DeTora (2018) focuses her discussion on the rhetorical ideologies of rightto-try legislation. Her study finds that laws such as right-to-try, which appear to advocate for
terminal patients to choose experimental medications under medical supervision, undermine the
responsibility of drug companies and incentivize lawful medicalization of terminally ill patients.
She points out that activist organizations such as ACT UP successfully advocated for the realities
of experimental medications during the 1990s AIDS epidemic, while supporters of laws such as
right-to-try often “treat serious illness as the setting for a melodramatic struggle about a right to
medical self-preservation that ultimately protects corporations instead of the sick” (p. 54). Kim
Hensley Owens (2020) connects RHM and the law by examining a rape case and juxtaposing the
20
case to that of a more widely circulated court case. The court case that made national news
revolved around a university ethics studies program, Mexican American Studies, being illegally
shut down. Hensley Owens argues that legal reporting for rape victims such as the participant in
her study can make it hard to find “an agentive space within the judicial system” (p. 383)
because laws such as reporting rape limit the effectiveness of rhetorical listening. Considering
the agentive limit of what people can and cannot report complicates the focus on a rape victim
who was lost in a larger university legal issue. Another impactful study about RHM and law
describes the legal ramifications of a university’s sexual abuse scandal in Michigan. Amy
Koerber (2022) describes the atrocious sexual misconduct acts as a type of rhetorical
infrastructure, or the unique infrastructural events that occurred prior to the public outcry
paralleling the #MeToo movement. One of Koerber’s arguments is that multiple Title IX reports
were filed against the offender, but the language in the legal reports belied the repeated gross
abuse several women endured even as the key facts of abuse were repeated multiple times. These
studies in RHM are important for publics and counterpublics theory as they connect language
and the concepts of biomedical issues, laws, and RHM; however, they offer an incomplete view
of publics, counterpublics, laws, and the movement around and between communities,
particularly vulnerable ones. Laws help shape publics, that is, they attempt to regulate and
maintain how people should act and what people should do, but, unfortunately, traditional legal
research in RHM does not clearly signify how counterpublics push back against unjust laws. The
dissonance between publics, counterpublics, laws, and community-based research is one way my
RHM research moves RHM scholarship forward and is useful to communities.
Now that I have built the connections to publics, counterpublics, laws, communities, and
biomedical issues within marginalized communities, I turn to discussing the classical Greek
21
concept of mētis and its relationship to rhetorical studies. After which , I more fully develop the
concept of collective mētis by including three distinct characteristics and arguing for the
effectiveness of collective mētis for marginalized communities.
What is Mētis?
I became interested in this concept in the last two years of my graduate studies. I was
initially researching how fitness was discussed in rhetorical terms in queer communities because
I have been active in various queer communities for 18 years. I have spent a substantial amount
of time working and fighting alongside queer communities in Central Florida, and it is here I
noticed that LGBTQ+ community members discussed the rhetorical implications of fitness in
very different ways than heteronormative counterparts. Thinking and talking with folx in these
communities got me interested in how communication circulates in these spaces. While engaging
with class reading requirements in my doctorate program, I started to come across articles that
discussed how fitness can often be used as a form of ableism and used to denigrate those with
accessibility needs. As I was reading about queer spaces and fitness perceptions, I was also
learning about community-based research and publishing. As a longtime proponent of helping
queer communities, I knew that I wanted to continue this type of field work, but the more I read
about community participation and research, the more I kept coming back to the idea of the
Greek classical term, mētis.17 I noticed that while mainly focused on human communication and
interaction, rhetorical studies oftentimes focuses on the discourse of people in certain spaces in
order to better elicit the ways language functions. Participation in these spaces include certain
words, phrases, or ways of communicating. I thought that one way to get at how discourse is
circulated in the Central Florida LGBTQ+ community I’m a part of is examine the role mētis
17
I say term and concept instead of “word” because singular Greek words usually encompass whole concepts.
22
plays in the community. Before I get into what mētis means and how it informs this dissertation,
I will give an overview of the mythological history of Zeus’s first wife, Metis,18 and the story’s
relationship to rhetorical studies.19
In Greek mythology, Zeus was married to Metis before he was married to Hera. Metis
was known as the most cunning of the Gods,20 and her cunning intelligence led the Gods to
victory over the titans and secured Olympus for the Gods (Dolmage, 2009). However, Metis’
cunning was also a source of intimidation for other Gods and much like the cuttlefish mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter, Metis could only be beaten by her own traps-- by her own
cunning. Zeus was scared of Metis’ power and the cunning her in utero child, Athena, was
foretold to possess. In fact, the Fates argued that Athena would one day have the power to
overthrow Zeus; so, Zeus swallowed Metis in order to prevent Athena’s birth. There are two
versions of what happened next. In the first, Metis lives inside of Zeus as a voice in his head. In
this version, Zeus asks Hephaestus to hit him in the temple and Athena pops out. In another
version, Metis stays in Zeus’ head as an advisor only he can hear. Zeus beats Metis by using her
own powers against her because this was the only way he could be more cunning than her.
Regardless of either version that is told and more to the point, Zeus literally consumed the power
of cunning which made him the most cunning God (Dolmage, 2009). These versions ask us to
consider: was Zeus the king of the Gods because of his brute force? According to mythological
accounts, no. He became the King of the Gods because he swallowed Metis which imbued him
with the ability to outmaneuver the other Gods; in this way, he wasn’t the wisest of the Gods, but
18
“Metis” refers to Zeus’ wife while “mētis” refers to the term.
It should be noted that I am only giving a brief mythological account of where the term came from, which is often
out of the mythical tradition.
20
I am aware there are Gods and Goddesses in the Greek mythical tradition, but I am using Gods as a blanket
statement to include both Gods and Goddesses.
19
23
the most cunning. In this context mēits, or cunning intelligence, matters because it allowed Zeus
to out-think and rhetorically circumvent the other Gods which cemented his title as the King of
the Gods. This idea of cunning and its relationship to discourse is still relevant, particularly in
rhetorical studies.
The connection of this myth to rhetorical studies is that language and the cunning
rhetorical moves community members make is usually analyzed through discourse. The rest of
this dissertation chapter will explore the concept of mētis and its relationship to rhetorical
studies. After a review of key works about mētis in rhetorical studies, I explain how current
research lacks the rhetorical focus on groups of bodies and I build my own theory, collective
mētis, and its defining characteristics that expand the potential for collective mētis in rhetorical
community-based research.
Mētis in Rhetorical Studies
While the term mētis appears in some of the work of ancient Greek scholars such as
Aeschylus, Plato, Oppian, and Callimachus (Detienne & Vernant, 1978), there is little tracing of
this concept through history until a few modern scholars picked it up and explored its rhetorical
underpinnings. The first modern scholar to extensively examine mētis was Jean-Pierre Vernant
(1957). He discussed the importance of mētis as it pertained to technologies’ goals of negotiating
different users of the time, but that was the extent of his work with the concept. Next, Carlo
Diano (1967) recognized some characteristics of mētis in his work with classical Greek terms
such as cunning, but his research was surface level. No scholar thoroughly unpacked what mētis
meant until Marcel Detienne & Jean-Pierre Vernant’s (1978) foundational book, Cunning
intelligence in Greek culture and society. This book, which took the authors over ten years to
complete, describes cunning intelligence, or “wiley performance” (p. 3) which comprises the
24
main characteristic of the term. According to these French authors, the Greeks thought of mētis
as oscillating between the two poles of intelligence (a sphere of being) and becoming (the
example of changeable opinion). As such, a person who embodies mētis is able to bend their
wiley (or cunning) intelligence in any direction a situation entails; however, Detienne & Vernant
(1978) explicitly state that they do not attempt to unpack the idea of the “trickster” (p. 7) and its
relationship to mētis.
Beyond Detienne & Vernant, contemporary scholars in rhetorical studies have researched
mētis and its suggestion of cunning intelligence. Particularly, scholars have examined the
embodied dimensions of mētis in a number of ways. Janet Atwill (1998) discusses the power of
mētis in relation to rhetoric very specifically. She writes that Metis’ power lies in her unique
“metamorphosis” and that mētis is a “kind of reasoning” (p. 50). She also discusses the
relationship of mētis and technē and how “The significance of technē often lies in the power of
transformation that mētis enables” (p. 56). These relationships are important to my dissertation as
“Mētis is associated with the indeterminacy of both subjects and objects” (p. 56) and is used to
create deceptive artifices that may help the people who engage with them. These artifices are
important for examining the way that embodied rhetorical action evolves over time and through
communities. Debra Hawhee (2001) examines the ancient Greek conceptions of bodies in 4th
century B.C.E. by noting how Isocrates’ connection between athletic and rhetorical training
formed complex educational systems. During this time technê was being taught to cultivate
embodied strategies that would “produce oneself differently” (p. 142). Dolmage (2009) aligns
mētis with extraordinary bodies within disability studies by arguing that rhetoric has ways of
discerning which bodies matter. He asserts the embodied rhetorical power of mētis by describing
the history/myth of Hephaestus and his s-curved spine. Dolmage claims that although
25
Hephaestus could only walk side-to-side due to his s-shaped spine, this disability allowed him to
walk quicker than any of the other Gods. For these reasons, Dolmage argues for the reclamation
of mētis “as the rhetoric of extraordinary bodies” (p. 5). In fact, he explicitly states, “Mêtis
provides a model for the ways we might repurpose rhetorical tensions around bodily values,
recognizing the stigmatization and effacement of bodily difference, yet also mobilizing new
stories and new expressive possibilities” (p. 8). This research adds to the rhetorical study of
bodies and affords a lens to think about embodied rhetorical power.
Continuing his research on mētis and bodies, Dolmage (2014) points to the concept’s role
in rhetorical disability studies by again returning to the potential power Hephaestus’ body
suggests. He claims that rhetorical studies as a discipline has largely ignored the body and the
embodied rhetorical history of how disability rhetoric can inform contemporary and generative
problems. Dolmage (2014) points to the potential power of mētis in order to connect historical
accounts of the body to contemporary ones. He then explains why and how his historical
accounts can be helpful to the field and observes mētis as a methodological approach to show
that all rhetoric is embodied. This book focuses on the rhetorics of history and the rhetorical
study of historical events by noting ideas from Janet Atwill (syntactic genre), James Murphy
(pragmatic genre), and Sharon Crowley (constructivist history) as this book “itself embodies
disability rhetoric” (p. 8). This book adds to the rhetorical body of scholarship by employing
mētis in a rhetorical context within disability studies. Although my work is not specifically
located within disability studies, this research helped me explore mētis and similar rhetorical
concepts that can be framed within rhetorical studies and bodies.
In his most recent book, Academic ableism: Disability and higher education, Dolmage
(2017) discusses historical implications of the physical university that are simultaneously
26
metaphysical in their denial of access to disabled persons, but he still focuses on individual
bodies and their relationships to mētis. He doesn’t specifically analyze mētis in this book, but he
does mention that this rhetorical concept informed his conceptions of disability rhetorics and the
academy. The last piece by Dolmage (2020) exclusively focuses on introducing mētis by arguing
that rhetoric is “the strategic study of the circulation of power through communication” (p. 1).
He also acknowledges that rhetoricians typically think about the power of the body and
communication negotiations, and he suggests that mētis is a way to “recognize that all rhetoric is
embodied” (p. 2). Next, he mentions Eickhoff and Peradotto’s work while arguing that the word
mētis itself means “no-one” when separated, but “someone” when put together to form the word.
Repeating the quote at the beginning of this chapter, Dolmage (2020) writes, “As such, me + tis
makes a radical phenomenological statement and poses a challenge to traditional identity
politics, centering the rhetorical nature of identity and embodiment” (p. 5). He includes a brief
mention of the trickster and its relationship to the term but does not expound on it. Dolmage
(2009; 2014; 2017; 2020) doesn’t emphasize the potential relationship of mētis and groups of
people. The idea that mētis is rhetorical and embodied is extremely helpful in my work, but I am
examining the collective aspects that he doesn’t explore. Connecting Dolmage’s work, I began to
explore how classical Greeks discussed and presented conceptions of bodies, which led me to
another piece written by Hawhee (2004).
In her landmark book, Bodily arts: Rhetoric and athletics in ancient Greece, Hawhee
(2004) begins with a story from BCE in which a statue was found after a shipwrecked en route to
Rome. The scholars of the time were interested in the shape of the body discovered in the
wreckage since the body was broad and muscular. This statue is used to frame the author’s ideas
as an introduction to her book which examines bodily arts and the ways that bodies perform and
27
practice certain arts (p. 4). Euexia (or good bodily disposition) is a part of aretē, or virtuosity,
and Aeschines claimed that one’s euexia can be seen even without visiting the gym; in other
words, corporeality for the ancient Greeks was inseparable from bodily actions. She notes the
following conceptions in relationship to bodies and classical Greek terms:
● Styles of intelligence (mētis)
● Immanent embodied time (kairos)
● The production of one’s nature (phusiopoiesis)
These concepts inform this dissertation as these concepts build on the ways that bodies are taken
up by rhetorical concepts, from the ancient Greeks to its inclusion in current rhetorical studies.
Hawhee (2004) analyzes what a style of intelligence can mean both individually and collectively
as a way to extend the rhetorical potential of mētis. This scholarship suggests that mētis provides
myriad rhetorical functions which have helped scholars advance rhetorical theory and ensure that
physical, material bodies are taken into account. The aforementioned scholars did a notable job
of bringing mētis to the forefront of scholarly research; however, they primarily focused on the
rhetorical implication of individuality.
This scholarship has helped scholars advance rhetorical theory in myriad capacities;
however, the primary focus on individuals and their bodies misses the opportunity to consider
how mētis works collectively. Additionally, current theories and scholarship inform this research
study, but they don’t explore the relationship of mētis to publics theory and the law. The cunning
of mētis is how counterpublics in marginalized communities are enacted through community
activism. In other words, counterpublics are necessary for communities to rise up against laws
that attempt to regulate community discourse and actions. Laws are inflexible and don’t change,
which require publics and counterpublics to respond to the laws; this is where mētis is helpful as
28
it allows folx to navigate laws while creating counterpublics against the laws they find
oppressive. In the sections that follow, this dissertation study focuses on building a theory of
collective mētis as a theoretical and analytic tool for examining counterpublic work in
marginalized communities.
Building the Concept of Collective Mētis
According to J. Blake Scott and Catherine Gouge (2019), theory building is a “creative
act” they “consider to be inventive, contextualized, and [a] value-driven methodological
performance” (p. 181). They argue that theory building in RHM “ideologically and contextually
situate[s] modes of inquiry that can help us pose questions, critically interpret enactments and
impacts, and provisionally make sense of practices, means, and goals” (p. 183). They continue
by arguing the importance of theory building in RHM isn’t simply predicting something might
happen; rather, they call for the importance of theory building by citing RHM as an inventional
tool that helps shape the field’s rhetorical implications. Utilizing this article and Annemarie
Mol’s (2008) argument that theory building can help researchers attune to rhetorical nuances, I
add to existing theory by adding new research aimed at serving marginalized communities. Lisa
Melonçon and J. Blake Scott (2018) assert that building theory is a key part of RHM work. In
their foundational book, Methodologies for the rhetoric of health & medicine, they write,
“Theory building is another way RHM and the studies in this collection can develop sustainable
scholarship…” (p. 11). In other words, they advance Karen A. Schriver’s (1989) types of theory
building moves by adding a type of framework in which attending to theory and its practice can
“in turn can lead to theory building” (p. 281) which is essential to forward movement of RHM
work. This dissertation contributes to theory building in RHM by creating collective mētis and
testing its efficacy in a marginalized queer community in Central Florida. The collective nature
29
of the community is key to building this concept, and collective is used intentionally in the
application of this theory.
The word “collective”21 has a specific and purposeful meaning in building the
theory of collective mēits. I chose this word as a way to reflect the iterative and varied nature of
communication in communities. The concept of collective in this research study is imbued with
“complex ontologies” (Melonçon & Arduser, 2022, p. 16) that actively consider how multiple
ontologies (Mol, 2002) are represented in communities. Collective references the community as
a whole but does not ignore the individuality of community members. The complexity is teasing
out which community norms, values, and expectations are part of the community and which are
part of the individual. In other words, issues that face the community are collectively specific to
each community member as well. The collective is, by necessity, coordinated through
boundaries, language dissemination, and engagement with outside forces that require a
collective, complex sense of addressing issues within communities. This is not to say that all
communities agree on everything that is said or done in their respective communities; rather,
agreement and disagreement bolster rhetorical and agentive output. For these reasons, complex
ontologies that exist within communities necessitate that communities are viewed as plural, and
collective mētis emphasizes the plural nature of communities that publics and counterpublics
exemplify. Choosing the word “collective” is also intentional in my research because each of the
characteristics of collective mētis are defined by how the community responds to norms, values,
and expectations outside of their own. In other words, the term collective is an overarching one
which represents collective mētis because the theory advocates that community members
approach community goals together; thus, collective mētis isn’t separate from collectivity, but is
21
I am intentionally limiting my citational practices to that of rhetorical studies as this is the scope in which my
other characteristics are located.
30
an integral part of it. In the characteristics that follow, each contributes to the collective theory
building of mētis in their own cooperative and dissonant ways. Taken together, though, they
invent a new practice for researchers in RHM communities.
The following sections more succinctly discuss each of the characteristics of
collective mētis and intentionally build on one another. The characteristics that comprise
collective mētis are: rhetorical collective agencies, translative state, and the trickster-body as
community actant.
Rhetorical Collective Agencies
The first characteristic of collective mētis is the ability to negotiate multiple agencies in
various situations. I limit my discussion to some key works to provide the direction of my
thinking. The theory of collective mētis aims to extend Carl Herndl & Adela C. Licona’s (2007)
idea of agency as “the conjunction of a set of social and subjective relations that constitute the
possibility of action” (p. 3). In doing so, this theory argues that agencies are negotiated between
communities and outside forces that require the community to respond in some way; however,
the agencies are always in flux and not owned by any one community or outside force. For this
reason, rhetorical collective agencies are always negotiated despite some rhetorical scholars
arguing that agency is capable of belonging to human individuals.
While Marilyn M. Cooper (2011) acknowledges the complicated nature of agency in
rhetorical studies and notes that agents are not free from the influences of their surroundings, she
claims that oftentimes the agent isn’t aware of the synaptic processes that create dispositions
which inform the ways that people ultimately act, so nonconscious processes do inform agentic
action. Ultimately, Cooper (2011) advances the idea that changes arise as the responses of
interactive agents, and that epistemological conceptions of individualized agency are embodied;
31
thus, personal agency can’t be removed as doing so shirks discoursal responsibility (p. 438). In
response, Laurie Gries (2012) argues that Cooper is incorrect as agency isn’t automatic in all
situations, so the brain isn’t the only thing that contributes to our choices; namely, she posits that
agency is distributed across situations and is not controlled by one singular entity (p. 71). In
opposition to the notion that agency can be owned, Herndl and Licona (2007) state that agency
“does not reside in a set of objective rhetorical abilities of a rhetor, or even her past
accomplishments. Rather, agency exists at the intersection of a network of semiotic, material,
and, yes, intentional elements and relational practices” (p. 8). Said another way, they claim that
agency isn’t something that can be possessed. In support of this conception, Karen Barad (2003)
discusses the concept of agency as “a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something
that someone or something has” (p. 826-827). Instead of thinking about rhetorical agencies
belonging to individuals, Jane Bennett (2010) argues that “agentic capacity is now seen as
differentially distributed across a wider range of ontological types” (p. 9) which points to how
agency is distributed, unequally, like power (Foucault, 1977). In fact, Bennett (2010) writes that
“power is not distributed equally across its surface” (p. 24). If power, like agency, is not
distributed equally, there exists a constant negotiation between those involved in a particular
rhetorical situation and this isn’t any different for communities.
Advancing the idea that agency isn’t something owned by individual humans, S. Scott
Graham (2009) explores conceptions of agency in rhetorical studies and contextualizes them as
connected to the human and non-human. He lists four maxims for the field that move rhetorical
theories of agency forward. They are:
1. Agency is the process of instantiating change in the status quo.
2. Change arises from a series of rhetorical events over time.
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3. Although the overall agentive program resists authoritative forces, the constitutive
rhetorical events frequently rely on those same authoritative forces.
4. A change becomes the status quo when the (new) authoritative structures operate to
maintain the change. (p. 279-280)
The above maxims assist in thinking about how agencies move through spaces like communities.
Much like Herndl & Licona’s (2007) idea that agency is transactive in how it attends to
communities’ choices, the collective rhetorical agencies included in this theory leverage
distributed agencies throughout communities that act both individually and collectively. This
concept illustrates the iterative and transformative nature of agency while helping others realize
their own collective agency (Greene, 2004; Campbell, 2006), particularly when “community
citizens work together” (Kuehl et al., 2020, p. 170).
The concept of rhetorical collective agencies is important to the concept of mētis because
it has been primarily described as a conscious cunning intelligence enacted by individuals and
community agencies haven't been considered in current rhetorical scholarship. Rhetorical agency
informs how cunning in metic situations reorganizes power around choices made by those in
certain situations. Mētis, then, creates opportunities for collective agencies to act in certain
spaces based on the communities’ group ontological approaches. This relationship between
characteristics is bound by the dissemination and degree to which mētis is enacted by community
members and those outside the community. Rhetorical collective agencies don’t have to be
consciously enacted. In fact, sometimes communal voices are responding to the agentive actions
of its own members. What certain agencies, or choices, are used to help the community in
forming a public or pushing back as a counterpublic is made visible by examining the rhetorical
collective agencies that aggregate community opinion. Only analyzing one part of the
33
community context misses the opportunity to consider the different ways the community
cooperates in relation to other communities, publics, counterpublics, and laws.
This research study contributes to the concept of rhetorical agency through the theory of
collective mētis and its potential discoursal power for persons in marginalized communities. In
other words, considering these ideas and their relationship to communities are key to how
agencies function within collective discursive spaces. The next section discusses the second
characteristic of collective mētis, translative state and follows collective rhetorical agency as it
builds on the notion that community members may consider their own norms, values, and
expectations. However, if they decide to choose their own ontological approach to a moment that
they act as community as a whole, they don’t enter the translative state that collapses their
norms, values, and expectations to match that of the community.
Translative State
This characteristic of collective mētis follows rhetorical collective agencies because there
is an agentic moment in which community members chose to represent themselves for some
issue or they chose to represent the community. The agentic moment could be as important as
deciding how to respond to oppressive laws or the agentic moment could represent a quotidian
matter such as choosing to organize a benefit event for a community member. The imperative
nature of the agentic moment determines community collective voice or many individual ones.
The selection is related to the complex ontologies mentioned above, because it combines
rhetorical collective agencies and community choice. Community members may choose to
represent their own interests over those of the community, and they still enact mētis in such
situations. When community members elect to represent themselves as a community member,
however, they enter a translative state and this process is key to moving from mētis that is
34
imbued individually to representing community principles imbued by collective mētis. I call this
transformation the translative state and is informed by Bruno Latour (1999) and a concept he
builds called translation.22 This term, translation, is defined as the “displacement, drift,
invention, mediation, the creation of a link that did not exist before and that to some degree
modifies two elements or agents” (p. 179) and is the state that creates collective mētis in
communities. Connecting translation to marginalized communities allows for language to exist
in the community counterpublic that did not exist before as the community represents collective
norms, values, and expectations. This space takes individual standards and transforms them into
community principles that guide the community in how they respond to publics, counterpublics,
and laws.
The translative state is important to the concept of mētis because it describes the
transactional and situational nature of community work. This state creates how collective mētis
can/does/should interact and circulate throughout the communities that use its cunning to
empower their discursive choices. In other words, the creation of boundaries that are
deconstructed, reconfigured, and reconstructed are done so through collective engagement with
mētis. The grouping of mētis in this way presents communities and community members with
ways of (re)acting to situations that they might find dangerous or discriminating. How folx in
communities (re)act to situations informs this characteristic can be conscious or subconscious.
This is part of the key of the translative state and collective mētis because this concept exists in
and around communities whether community members are aware of how their individual values
are grouped with others in the community. Collective mētis requires this state to happen so the
22
This term is italicized because it is italicized in Latour’s work and because it represents community members
passing through a threshold.
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complex ways of defining what the community should do is operationalized. This includes
reacting to publics or counterpublics.
I argue that collective mētis resides within the translative state of considering more than a
singular ontology. What doesn’t exist in current rhetorical studies is the exploration of multiple
ontologies and agentive bodies as they move together in a collective vein. In this group ontology
which becomes collective mētis through translation encourages and produces a unified
community voice. I hold that this sense of connectedness empowers communities to fight against
oppressive laws that actively attempt to regulate and medicalize them. In this fight against
oppressive agencies, individual bodies are crucial both physically and rhetorically (Chávez,
2018a) in order to create collective communities that function with cunning rhetorical
knowledge. These actions are a result of the collective mētis that marginalized communities may
utilize to champion against oppressive perceptions of what minorities' bodies should look like/do
in order to trick/deceive those oppressing them. The key, though, is that this state creates a
trickster figure to help marginalized communities fight against oppressive forces, and constitutes
the last characteristic of collective mētis, which the next section explores in detail.
The next section describes how the trickster-body as a community actant23 is a product of
both the rhetorical collective agencies and the translative state that communities enact when
coming up against an oppressive force.
The Trickster-body as a Community Actant
The third characteristic of collective mētis is the trickster that other rhetorical scholars
have not researched extensively. The first use of the term trickster in English appeared in the
18th century and was meant to designate a person with morally ambiguous characteristics.
23
For ease of reading, trickster-body as a community actant may be referred to as trickster or trickster-body
throughout the rest of the dissertation.
36
Throughout time, the term has taken on an anthropological meaning.24 The term that I am
positing, trickster-body as a community actant comes from Bruno Latour (1999) and his
contribution to rhetorical studies which I connect to community work.
Actantcy and the Trickster
Latour (1999) introduces the concept of actants (p. 180) as imperative to building
the theory of collective mētis because it illustrates how communities make discoursal decisions
together, separate, and through one another in order to advance community goals. Latour (1999)
codifies this concept through the citizen-gun, or gun-citizen. In this example, Latour describes
how a materialist25 understanding of a gun (i.e., “guns kill people”) is in direct conflict with
those of the National Rifle Association who claim that “guns don’t kill people; people kill
people” (pp. 174-180). Actantcy is important to the theory of collective mētis because it argues
that communities perform one voice informed by multiple members of the community after
passing the translative state. The term actant matters to marginalized communities because it
allows communities to form their own counterpublics in response to oppositional forces that
attempt to exert force over them. To this end, Latour (1999) also notes that discursive moves
change based on their interaction, and I see a connection between the theory of actants and how
marginalized communities use their individual values to form community norms, values, and
expectations in response to oppressive laws.
The next section connects the trickster-body to body studies and is important to the
theory of collective mētis because I developed the theory specifically as a theoretical framework
24
It should be noted that the term and concept has existed in Native American cultures for years (see Hynes & Doty,
1993); however, these sources are outside the scope of this dissertation.
25
Rhetorical new materialism informs this dissertation but is not a goal of the dissertation; as such, I only mention
materialism here as a nod to Latour and others’ research with this concept.
37
for marginalized communities. These communities are usually those which most often find their
bodies the target of oppressive forces.
Bodies and Embodiment
The body and embodiment are important to this research study because how folks define
bodies and what they should do is key to developing the trickster. This section has two parts. The
first is to cite some important sources in body studies that inform my understanding of the
trickster, then I discuss specific sources from RHM that are useful to the concept of the trickster
and inform this RHM dissertation. Judith Butler (1990) argues that “any theory of the culturally
constructed body ought to question ‘the body’ as a construct of suspect generality when it is
figured as passive and prior to discourse” (p. 129). She also advances the notion that bodies are
performative (1993) and that they can be precarious (2015) because of the juxtaposition of power
and bodies. Sara Ahmed (2017) succinctly tells the reader that body perception is an important
part of examining the relationships with them. Nancy Tuana (2008) employs the concept of
interactionist ontology as a way to better understand how larger social situations can regulate the
perceptions of what bodies should be doing. Donna Haraway (1985; 2018) reminds us that
bodies are also negotiated between and through human and non-human actors.
Moving into RHM studies and research, Lisa Melonçon (2018) argues that considering
embodied actions of RHM research affords “new ways to consider embedded ideological,
political, social, and economic structure and how those structures implicate the bodies within
them” (p. 106). Situating this dissertation within embodied moments is crucial for understanding
how communities function through the collective action of individuals. Recently, A. Abby
Knoblauch & Marie E. Moeller (2022) discuss in their edited collection introduction that the
word body comes with a host of confusing meanings. They argue that “bodies are always judged
38
in concert with contexts” (p. 5), and that bodies, embodiment, and embodied rhetorics are key to
understanding how bodies are discussed and researched in RHM.
These sections are important because they illustrate that bodies should be the source of
study--especially the relationship to embodiment rhetoric. The trickster-body comes from these
studies as its goal is to phase between perceptions of bodies that best help the communities in
which it serves. Collective mētis encourages use of the trickster to oppose oppositional forces
that marginalized communities face. This move in collective mētis is often in response to
domineering forces focused on controlling vulnerable bodies, and creates the trickster-body,
which the next section discusses.
Understanding the Trickster
While rhetorical studies has produced little research developing the concept of the
trickster, there are some key scholars pertinent to this literature review. The trickster that
collective mētis creates is not a physical body, but a concept that represents collective
community customs. According to Butler (1993), concepts can perform and do things in
communities. The trickster-body is no exception, as it is enacted through the performativity of
the community. In other words, the performance of the trickster-body is how collective mētis
changes the way communities respond to outside discursive formations. To return to Dolmage
(2009) the myths of Medusa point to one thing: “her ability to threaten and shake up a maledominated society” (p. 17). Connecting Dolmage’s piece directly to the theory of collective
mētis, power dynamics in marginalized communities are similar to the performance of the
“disidentification” Medusa experiences. This is evidenced by the hunters who attempt to destroy
medusa because of her etymological, mythological, and symbolic embodiments. The tricksterbody is similar to Medusa because it’s created by the embodiment of the whole community but
39
can shift its concept to avoid oppositional forces. Here, the key to the trickster-body as a concept
and characteristic of collective mētis is its discursive osmotic power to create, cross, and
deconstruct boundaries that are not meant to be crossed. According to scholars, while tricksters
can be funny, they, in many ways, highlight certain social values because they focus on the
nature of beliefs, whether laughter ensues or not (Hynes & Doty, 1993). Boundary creation is a
common occurrence when researching the trickster (Street, 1972; Hyde, 1998) and is connected
to their liminal state. Different from the translative state, the liminal state allows them to work
from marginality to the social sharing of common values and regard for others (Turner, 1967;
1969). Put another way, tricksters have the ability to break down and re-create liminal borders
which allow them to exist in new contexts within new spaces created by the community. The
trickster is a tricky concept. In fact, the trickster isn’t a meaning, but trickster is meaning/s
because blurring boundaries allows them to be what they need to be in various community
contexts. There is research outside of rhetorical studies that argue the value of the trickster is
mainly located within the power of the trickster to create, cross, and redact boundaries in clever
ways.26 Lewis Hyde (1998) claims the trickster is amoral and not immoral, which is important to
note because the trickster as part of collective mētis does not intend immoral acts; instead, the
community trickster is the reflection of marginalized community communication practices.
Extrapolating from Hyde’s work, the trickster-body and its relationship to collective mētis is an
amorphous one without gender27 or temporal body because communities-based actions and
26
While not an exhaustive list, see the work of Native American literary studies such as (Niatum, 2018) who
anthropomorphize the Raven in a poem that elicits the exclusive and transformative nature of the trickster and its
illustrious boundary-breaking and have been writing this work for many, many years prior to the 18th century.
27
Hyde (1998) argues that most trickster figures are traditionally referred to as male, but there are many issues with
this interpretation of the trickster figure as oftentimes, these figures can be both literal people and mythological
tropes formed to explore conceptions of culture (widely meant). See pages 335-343 for a full discussion of this
issue.
40
discursive power require that boundaries blur in certain situations that may threaten the
community they gain, through collective mētis and the trickster-body, the upper hand. Erec
Smith (2014), in his PhD dissertation, argues that tricksters are, “by definition, an ambiguous and
elusive figure” (p. 22) and comments that through marginality creates a different “creature” (p.
26) that may be concrete or intangible. Sometimes, the trickster can negatively impact
communication and communities (Smith, 2020), but communities creating trickster figures
through employing collective mētis is the key to understanding how and why they are created.
Ultimately, the trickster-body is an important part of collective mētis because considering
communities’ rhetorical collective agencies and the translative state allows the trickster-body to
become a “situation-inverter” (Doty and Hynes, 1993, p. 37) that best serves community
interests. The resulting created trickster-body becomes a hybrid actor that oscillates between
following rules and hegemonic power structures (publics), or assisting disenfranchised
communities usurp these structures (counterpublics). This concept is particularly helpful when
considering how mētis assists “precarious environments” (Brouwer, 2005) such as vulnerable
communities by resisting assumed ways of responding to external forces “quickly and
decisively” (Scott, 1998).
The concept of the trickster is important to the theory of collective mētis because it
requires community involvement, or the collective. The trickster-body, then, is a creation of
community interaction and results in the community positing as a public, counterpublic, or a mix
of both. Determining how communities are situated within publics or counterpublics is defined
by collective mētis and is translated through actantcy and the cunning nature of tricksters and
their socially-constructed power. In short, the trickster creates publics and counterpublics that
they can move between. These counterpublic enclaves created by trickster-bodies exist as
41
potential agentive spaces until collective mētis makes them visible when they would benefit the
community. Attempts to regulate public and counterpublic spaces aren't possible without the
trickster and the trickster’s imbued mētis. This discursive power grows as it moves into
collective mētis. For example, the trickster allows a community operating as a counterpublic to
homogenize their intimate partner communication that tricks the law into thinking their practices
aren’t illegal.
The theory of collective mētis that I’m building leads to my contribution in rhetorical
studies. The trickster-body is a potentially helpful analytic tool for communities to empower the
community against oppressive forces. Building this theory also serves as a theoretical analytic
framework for RHM community research. I propose that collective mētis can be employed as a
theoretical framework by other marginalized communities too as a tool that focuses on the
collective contexts of language in communities. While RHM has worked to include ethical
community work, collective mētis offers a more involved way to explore communal situations.
This project fills a gap that allows rhetorical collective agencies, translative state, and the
trickster-body to create, reveal, and encourage communities and its members to attune to issues
of language and medicalizing laws.
The next section visualizes this theory and explains its relevance to rhetorical studies and
RHM.
Visual Representation of Collective Mētis
Below is a visual that represents the theory of collective mētis and its parts.
Following Figure 1 is an explanation of the steps and how the characteristics above contribute to
the theory.
42
Figure 1. A visual diagram of the theory of collective mētis
The key to understanding collective mētis is to start with rhetorical agency that combines
with an individual’s values. Next, an agentic moment, or a time that a choice has to be made by
43
the community members requires they choose their own values over community ones. If they
decide to choose their own way of communicating and enacting their interests, they move to the
right at the top of Figure 1. When a choice has been made to represent oneself as an individual,
mētis exists for that person and their personal choices; however, when an individual chooses to
represent themselves as a collective community member, they pass through a translative state
either consciously or unconsciously. This is a key choice as remaining to value one’s own
choices over the community doesn’t create a translative state. Passing through this state requires
the community member to choose the norms, values, and expectations of the whole community
largely over their own and is indicated in Figure 1 as a dotted line. After passing through the
translative state, the community at some points faces an oppositional force contrary to
community customs. The oppositional force is usually some outside force that requires the
marginalized community to operate in a particular way. The enactment of an oppositional force
creates a trickster-body that oscillates between community choices of publics or counterpublics.
If the community agrees with the oppositional force, the power dynamic is supported. If the
community disagrees with the oppositional force, a counterpublic28 is created which marks a
space for the community to negotiate. All the while, collective mētis is working to empower and
usurp the oppositional force by presenting a trickster who oscillates between publics and
counterpublics finding the best way to support the community that reflects their norms, values,
and expectations. The white spaces in Figure 1 between the boxes are areas that allow collective
mētis to grow as the cunning intelligence of collective mētis intensifies. While mētis is situated
throughout every process, collective mētis is prominent after translation because of its rhetorical
value. The boxes in the visual grow as the process moves forward as a key of collective mētis is
28
I should note that “publics” and “counterpublics” are placed within boxes but are not bound theories.
44
its ability to outwit, through cunning intelligence, its opposition. In this case, the trickster-body
outmaneuvers requirements from the law, which this chapter will illustrate.
Conclusion
This literature review started by describing publics and counterpublics theory in
rhetorical studies and in RHM and the relationships with the law. The impactful studies within
RHM noted that the relationship between rhetoric and the law and publics and counterpublics are
key to understanding how studies situate publics and counterpublics within rhetorical contexts.
Following these sections is an explanation of the concept of mētis and this literature review
traces the term through contemporary rhetorical studies. Using mētis as a theoretical concept, this
chapter then builds the theory of collective mētis through three specific characteristics: rhetorical
collective agencies, translative state, and trickster-body as a community actant. This chapter also
argued that the concept of a trickster-body allows communities through their norms, values, and
expectations to push against oppressive medicalization and normalizing medical and cultural. By
describing these characteristics, this chapter argues for the theory of collective mētis in
community-based research in RHM studies, particularly marginalized ones. The chapter ends
with the connection between collective mētis as a theoretical analytic framework for considering
RHM community research and its contribution to RHM.
In order to test the theory of collective mētis this chapter built, I developed a
methodology. The next chapter discusses community-based research methodologies and
describes my research process, and approach to analysis.
45
Chapter Three: Methodology
In the context of advocacy, the rhetoric of health and medicine as social justice
aims to bring awareness to the causes and effects of racial and ethnic disparities,
among other social and economic injustices, in health care and to transform the
materializations of these injustices in everyday life in order to bring about health
equity. -Jennifer Helene Maher (2020)
I follow previous rhetorical scholars who made a distinction about methodology as the
framework or approach to research based on disciplinary ideology (Scott & Melonçon, 2018;
Sullivan & Porter, 1997). I carefully consider their methodological approaches in order to create
and situate a successful methodology for this study. One goal of this study is to investigate how
LGBTQ+ community members in Central Florida communicate with one another when looking
for a potential intimate partner. Namely, this investigation requires paying close attention to the
discursive ways that community members disrupt HIV disclosure laws that attempt to regulate
their own health and agentive practices both individually and collectively. Knowing that research
is iterative and messy, my research questions slightly changed throughout the dissertation
process to reflect the current ones below:
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
○ What types of disclosures do they express and negotiate, and how?
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
46
● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
○ Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
This research projects invites others to analyze the concept of collective mētis29
and examine how this concept empowers community communication while also allocating space
for community members to both individually and collectively fight against oppression. This
study is important as the history of queer communities is oftentimes embedded within historical
accounts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Marginalized communities such as the one in Central
Florida require community members to respond to laws that attempt to regulate their bodies. This
policing oftentimes stems from laws that medicalize queer communities and, unfortunately,
queer communities tend to be familiar with. To this end, this chapter attempts to examine how
community methodologies function within rhetorical studies broadly and specifically within the
rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM).
Following this paragraph is a description of community-based research in rhetorical
studies. I include this section to demonstrate where this methodology and study is situated. Then
I move into community-based research with a particular emphasis in RHM. I then describe
research methods which include the rationale of conducting community interviews and textual
analysis. Next, I examine my approach to analysis which included coding interviews for
29
This term is built and defined in chapter 2.
47
evidence of collective mētis in community member interviews. This chapter ends with a
summary of my methodology and previews the next.
Community-based Research30
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been around for a long time. A
common understanding of this approach requires that “communities guide what work is
conducted [in the communities] on their behalf” which include “deep integration of community
members” and their critical rhetorical approaches (Mocarski et al. 2020). I define communitybased research as in situ (Endres et al., 2016) because researchers should be active in the
community, they research in order to illustrate the nuances of community-based research that
may not be accessible to someone outside of the community.
I first searched existing scholarship on community-based research in rhetorical studies
and found that there is a distinctive move in rhetorical studies to working with people in
communities through field work. Candice Rai & Caroline Gottschalk Druschke (2018) argue that
field methodologies “offer particularly powerful tools for studying the textures of places and
politics that shape rhetoric and within which rhetoric emerges, circulates, enacts, and dissipates”
(p. 1). Field work in rhetorical studies has the potential to elucidate important everyday rhetorical
practices in communities. Recent research suggests that rhetoricians are considering a new
emphasis on research methodologies, many of which involve empirically driven human subjects
research with engagement in field sites as community-based research. Rhetorical studies have
started to fully embrace community and field work. For example, Sara L. McKinnon et al. (2016)
reinvigorate rhetorical studies by describing their understanding of qualitative methods and the
contextual nature of working in the field. Michael K. Middleton et al. (2011) advocate for
30
It may read as though I’m insinuating all communities are the same. I’m not. Every community and their
functions vary according to that particular community’s needs.
48
rhetorical field methods as an approach necessary to focus on the “forms of rhetorical action that
are accessible only through participatory methods” (p. 387). Taken together, these sources point
to the importance of incorporating community members in community-based research.
Next, I looked for examples of community member participation in tandem with HIV
research. I didn’t limit my search to only rhetorical studies and found studies that inform my
own. For example, Dr. Liz Barr, a rhetorician studying issues of HIV and community
participation, engaged in community-based research with the organization, Treatment Action
Group, which attempts to track HIV cure-related clinical trials (Barr & Jefferys, 2019) with
community members. She and colleagues also argue that part of the barrier for a cure for women
living with HIV results in the lack of female participants (Gianella, Tsibris, Barr, Godfrey,
2016); as such, they recruit community participants to help guide research questions and
methodology. Participants are included in research design and community processes are made
transparent in medical spaces to encourage and inquire which HIV-related questions are most
important and affect the community (Dubé, Barr, Brown, & Taylor, 2019). Including participants
in the research with the goal to help the community is integral to community-based research
because it strengthens rhetorical invention and research methods. These case studies provide a
reminder that community members are necessary and important parts of rhetorical field work and
community-based research.
Community work in RHM also argues for many of the same methodological approaches
as those listed above. The next section takes up examples of community-based research within
RHM in order to highlight how my research aligns with trends in the field.
49
The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
Community-based research within RHM has been a subject of recent scholarship. To this
end, Lisa Melonçon and J. Blake Scott (2017) argue that not enough attention is given to
“documenting and explaining decisions made during the research process” (p. 10) and this
includes community-based research. Following are examples that examine RHM research
methodologies and inform this study.
The first RHM study that informs this dissertation was conducted by Rachel Bloom-Pojar
(2018), which points to researcher positionality within community-based methodologies. In this
work, Bloom-Pojar (2018) describes her interaction with a medical research team in the
Dominican Republic as a translator between medical professionals and the patients they serve
through a non-profit organization named The Center for Rural Health. Her work in the
Dominican Republic as both a participant and a researcher encouraged her to consider her
positionality and think through how her role in the community that she participated in was
shaped by the transcultural nature of the clinic. This RHM study importantly demonstrates how
RHM work can rhetorically engage communities to rhetorically “enable the work of others” (p.
233) and advances how communities function plurally.
Christa Teston et al.’s (2019) critical examination of survey methods for precarious
publics is also imperative when considering working with participants in RHM and are defined
by Teston et al. (2019) as “a racial and/or linguistic minority, economically disadvantaged,
disabled, former or current drug user, undocumented, un(der)educated, oppressed, sexualized,
disenfranchised, criminalized, and/or colonized” (p. 321). This particular case study provides a
heuristic for RHM scholars as a way to reflexively and critically reconsider their approaches to
community-based research in at-risk communities such as marginalized ones.
50
The last RHM example comes from Rebecca A. Kuehl, Sara A.Mehltretter-Drury, & Jenn
Anderson (2020) as this study aims to develop “rhetoric as rhetorical health citizenship” (p. 164),
by examining two case studies embedded within communities. The first community, located in
Montgomery County, Indiana, focused on better understanding and identifying substance abuse.
The second case study, located in Brookings, South Dakota, focused on promoting breastfeeding support. These studies inform this dissertation as they point to “the myriad ways to
discursively enact health citizenship through collaborative civic practice” (p. 176). In other
words, RHM community work examines the engagement between researchers and the civic
practice of communities. One key takeaway from this study is that community-based research
actually does things in the communities they aim to help. Another takeaway is that communitybased research should be informed by the communities themselves and that researchers should
be aware of their positionalities within these communities.
These studies within RHM inform my methodology as I negotiate working in vulnerable
communities such as the LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida and help me connect the
relationships between publics, counterpublics and HIV disclosure laws. Taken together, these
foreground articles help to ensure a successful community-based research study that would
contribute to studies in RHM. The next section takes up how my positionality as a member of
this community informs this research study.
Positionality
Rhetorical studies and RHM have been engaged in community-based research, and there
are many ways to answer research questions built together that help both the researcher and
community. However, without understanding one’s researcher positionality, it doesn’t matter
what discipline specific research one creates since a fair and successful community-based project
51
necessitates the exploration and application of one’s researcher orientation. Additionally,
researcher positionality is a key component of ethical and successful community work
considerations (Powell and Takayoshi, 2012; Scott and Gouge, 2019; Markham, 2018).
Particularly when working with vulnerable populations such as the community I’m working
with, researchers have to make their positionality clear within the community. This step should
happen as researchers and community members create the research design.
My study warrants that since community members helped form the research questions of
this study by telling me the things that matter most to them in the community, that they should
also answer them. Making this move explicit is meant to remind community participants that
they are the ones finding innovative discursive ways to communicate intra- and intercommunities about HIV disclosure. My experience as the researcher impacts the way questions
are asked, but my experience as a community member assists the community with research
questions as they are co-constituted, even if mainly from informal conversations around HIV
disclosure laws in Florida. My positionality in the community as a member and researcher also
benefits both this study and the community because I know what community members would
like to see this study do. In other words, I approach this community-based research from a
researcher and personal experiential position. Not only do I count myself as a community
member because I have been a part of this community for more than 10 years, but my focus and
attention to issues of health and queerness is also meant to benefit the community. I have a lot of
personal investment in issues of community-based research and laws. I am invested in this
research because of Tom31 passing away due to lack of supportive healthcare which led to fatal
complications from AIDS. I have followed issues such as these in LGBTQ+ communities since
31
This connection is explained fully in Chapter 1: Introduction. I bring it up here to provide my personal exigency
for research in this community as it relates to my researcher positionality.
52
and over time have noticed a lot of discursive moves queer communities make in regard to HIV
disclosure laws and potential intimate partner selection. As such, my personal exigency for
conducting research in this community are the following:
1. As a part of the queer community, I know that we often find ways around laws that
attempt to regulate our communicative practices.
2. To give back to the community by sharing any findings and campaigning against HIV
disclosure laws.
3. Provide insight into the ways queer people communicate online and in person through
various means and modalities (such as the differences in meeting at a club or an app such
as Scruff).
These statements are the result of my involvement in queer spaces for 18 years, and the
word community has taken on a more complex meaning. The word, at first, meant a group of
people who had common interests; however, over time the word has come to imply action within
queer spaces. Currently, I view community as a way to support other people in our spaces while
actively championing activist work. Primarily, this activist work includes negotiating against
hegemonic, cis, white, and straight laws that attempt to police our bodies and community
communication. In fact, as I sit here and write this paragraph, there has been a resurgence in
Florida that attempts to regulate queer and trans spaces.32 Community members, including
myself, are organizing sit-ins, walk outs, and canceling businesses that support anti-LBGTQ+
policies such as these laws. Community-based research that inspires and uplifts LGBTQ+
communities is needed now more than ever, and this dissertation aims to be a source of
empowerment for these communities in Central Florida.
32
See the current debate around the termed “Don’t say gay” bill (FLHB 1557) that censors K-12 teachers’
comments about their own participation in LGBTQ+ spaces. For a news highlight of the events, click here.
53
The next section reviews the research methods I chose for this research project and
includes the methodological rationale for choosing two in particular: interviews and textual
analysis.
Research Methods
This study was reviewed by USF’s IRB #003823. The next two sections will detail the
two methods used: interviews and textual analysis. It will also describe the reasons for choosing
these methods. Because this project attempts to understand the nuanced ways that community
members discuss their potential intimate partner communication, the use of interviews and
textual analysis is ideal. This dissertation builds on existing research gaps in rhetorical studies
and aims to better illustrate the theory of collective mētis, particularly through rhetorical
connections to publics, counterpublics, and laws as they relate to the theory of collective mētis.
Understanding that publics are plural is key to the elusive nature and attentive nature of them.
Also, the idea that publics can restrict discoursal and sociocultural diversity while counterpublics
empower people to resist oppressive laws (Asen & Brouwer, 2001) and focus on the inequalities
that publics highlight (Asen, 2015) is integral to publics and counterpublics theory. In other
words, how power differentiates and is negotiated between various groups of people is important
to understanding publics and counterpublics. In fact, Robert Asen (2000) comments that
counterpublics “illuminate the differential power relations among diverse publics of a multiple
public sphere” (p. 425) and Michael Warner (2002) gives an example of gay (or queer)
counterpublics specifically by noting that community members in these counterpublics are “freed
from heteronormative speech protocols” (p. 86) which is important to my research methods
because it allows community members to speak freely and without judgment from the researcher.
Warner continues by arguing that counterpublics such as the LGBTQ+ one in Central Florida
54
circulate discourse in ways that circumvent individual stigma and encourage community
members to invite and seek other communities where they can be themselves and part of the
community. Recognizing that counterpublics aren’t all the same is a powerful tool for examining
how communities discuss issues of risk and address conflict. In other words, communities and
their discoursal practices when selecting a potential intimate partner are plural as they often
fluctuate between multiple groups and communities. This is also the case for the LGBTQ+
community in Central Florida as there isn’t just one community; however, my research examines
one of them. Publics and counterpublics is a way to examine the complex iterative nature of
discourses within the plurality of communities.
The next section will discuss the importance of interviews to research studies and
illustrate why I chose to interview participants. It also examines how I recruited and conducted
interviews with various community members.
Interviews
According to Peräklyä & Ruusuvuori (2011), through conducting interviews, “the
researcher can reach areas of reality that would otherwise remain inaccessible such as people/s
subjective experiences and attitudes'' (p. 529). Additionally, interviews “can be, and have been,
analyzed as specimens of interaction and reasoning practices rather than as representations of
fact or ideas outside the interview situation” (p. 529). I chose this method of qualitative research
because asking about community communication practices allows for authentic representation of
community member thinking when selecting a potential intimate partner and their relationship to
HIV disclosure laws. This method also bridges the gap from my membership and informal
conversations in the community to a formal study with data. As Smagorinsky (2008) writes,
“Interviews . . . are not benign but rather involve interaction effects'' (p. 395) because interviews
55
require an exchange from both the interviewer and the interviewee. I worked very consciously to
represent the communities’ words accurately since folkx in the community trusted me with
personal information that still has stigma attached to it. Although interviews were formalized
ways of capturing participant thinking, I was cautious not to upset community trust. I made this
move by ensuring the methodological approaches were transparent and clear to community
members throughout the whole process. I valued community members' input in how I
constructed and asked questions about their disclosure practices, and no question was required to
be answered so that participants only shared what they were comfortable sharing. These
interviews allowed me to conduct more in-depth conversations with participants in the LGBTQ+
community in Central Florida in a way that focuses on publics, counterpublics, laws, potential
intimate partner selection, and the rhetorical implications of collective mētis.
Participants were recruited from a number of different community “sites” that are related
to my positionality as community member and researcher. This research study was meant to
recruit participants from a LGBTQ+ non-profit because the doctor and I have a positive
professional relationship. My relationship with the clinic and the doctor meant that he was
willing to help me recruit for interviews. I left flyers at the clinic (see Appendix A). However, I
only recruited two participants from the clinic, so I extended the study to those in the larger
Central Florida community that included Tampa, FL. I knew that this community tends to
communicate through word-of-mouth networks, so I asked some queer community friends and
members in Tampa, FL to spread the word about the study. In other words, I told one person
about the study who, in turn, would tell another person and so on. This move elicited a greater
response to the study and allowed me to think about community health communication practices
in a different way: those in the community wanted to help someone they knew was part of the
56
Tampa queer community as opposed to the clinic in Orlando, FL where people didn’t know who
I was or what this study attempted to do despite help from the clinic and marketing approaches.
The queer community in Central Florida is selective in who it talks to. It is also
conscientious when speaking to an outsider (consider, for example, the limited number of
responses I elicited from the clinic in Orlando as I don’t currently live there). As previously
mentioned, I’ve been a part of this community for a while, so leaning into my experiential
knowledge of this community led me to better understand how this community operated and
communicated potential researchers. Asking people in the LGBTQ+ Central Florida community
to talk about their potential intimate partner selection would likely limit the amount of
information an outsider would receive. This is not unusual, as many in the community are aware
of their vulnerable status as queer people living in Florida. They tend to be hesitant to talk about
sex--especially to researchers who will have their words recorded. Talking about sex with
researchers in this community is taboo notably because HIV disclosure laws in Florida is still a
highly stigmatized topic. To help mitigate these issues, I invited those in the community to help
design this study and I asked community members what questions were most important to them.
I made this move in order to engage community members in the effects questions may have
during the interviews. One community member suggested I “describe the study as only for gay
people in their community and identify myself as gay so people would be more willing to open
up honestly and trust me with their stories” (Community Member, personal communication,
April 10, 2022). Other community members mentioned things like, “Say that you are gay and
trying to help us,” (Community Member, personal communication, May 11, 2022) as a way to
help alleviate mistrust. These interviews allowed me to gather data that helps analyze how queer
57
communities communicate in very specific ways about potential intimate partner selection and
HIV disclosure.
This study included sensitive information about participants’ potential intimate partner
selections, so I tried to make sure they felt comfortable telling me their experiences, considering
we might have mutual friends. In other words, I didn’t want to “out” anyone who may have told
me sensitive information that others, including partners, didn’t know. So, the interviews were
conducted via the virtual platform, Zoom, to ensure anonymity since participants didn’t need to
tell me their name or turn their video on. Verbal consent was ascertained on Zoom within a
couple minutes of recording the interview and participants were sent a copy of the informed
consent form. I hoped to get 10-12 interviews for my research study. This number isn’t arbitrary,
but instead follows Kirk St.Amant & Lisa Melonçon’s (2016) lead from their industry
professionals study in technical communication that realized “it would be difficult to get the
types and quality of responses (i.e., data) needed through a traditional interview method” and
that doing so “with a relatively large pool of individuals (i.e., 15 or more industry professionals)
would be even more complex and difficult” (p. 349). Similarly, my study aimed for only 10-12
participants in order to ask in-depth questions to a smaller number of people considering the
amount of time and access required to take part in the virtual interview. I also aimed for 10-12
participants because of the limited amount of time I have to complete this research project. I
successfully recruited 15 participants which exceeded my initial goals and had to stop accepting
interviews in order to complete this project on time. I did, however, attempt to interview a
diverse group of people within the community. All interviewees were between 25-50 years old
and identified as either gay, non-binary, queer, and all identified as male. There were
interviewees who identified as Hispanic/Latino, Black, Multiracial, and White as well people
58
that reported they were partnered, divorced, single, and those who didn’t identify with any
relationship status.
I interviewed participants from March to May 2022 from the LGBT+ community in
Central Florida. After the 30-60 minute individual interview, the interviews were transcribed.
Next, I coded the transcripts based on my research questions and the theory of collective mētis
characteristics based on participant interview questions (see Appendix B).
Textual Analysis
I analyzed interview transcripts and the Florida statutes (i.e. laws) because this analysis
will help me determine how these communities may (or may not) be engaging with the theory of
collective mētis. I should note that many RHM scholars have moved toward online forums or
recruiting materials online; however, I chose not to use online participants or online forums for
this project for a number of reasons. Due to the amount of time I have to complete this project, I
chose to use only the two methods listed in this chapter. I also chose not to access personal
online profiles for two primary reasons: 1) online profiles are often not dialogic; and 2) the
material of the online profiles. To the first point, online profiles offer a flat view of the study
research questions and only offer one side of the communication. The material of the profiles
may also not be effective as the explicitness of some of the profiles in academic work could be
offensive, particularly when the explicit material doesn’t help with the goals of the research
study. I only chose to analyze interview transcripts in conjunction with the language in the
statute, Florida Statutes, Public Health: Sexually Transmissible Diseases, which the next section
takes up.
I should note that a statute is a broad designation of the law which often carries resulting
categories, or sub-statutes, that indicate specific unlawful acts. I analyzed the language of this
59
statute and the consequential unlawful acts because the rhetorical nature of them required
analysis in tandem with the interview transcripts. The statute that I examined had two substatutes which were: 1) Sexually Transmissible Diseases, Unlawful Acts and 2) Sexually
Transmissible Diseases, Penalties. The first sub-statute 1) Unlawful Acts statute notes it is illegal
for people to know that “he or she is infected with one or more of the [STI] diseases'' (Florida
Statutes, 2020b) listed and must inform their potential partner of the possibility of transmittal.
The first statute separates these unlawful acts into two categories: sub-statute 384.24(1) is for
diseases such as chancroid, gonorrhea, genital herpes simplex, etc., while the sub-statute that
requires disclosure of PLHIV is 384.24(2). In other words, there is a separate law filed under the
Sexually Transmissible Diseases, Unlawful Acts specifically addressing informed consent for
PLHIV. There are also two sub-statutes that point to the penalties of violating these unlawful
acts. The first sub-statute notes that any violation of 384.24(1) commits a “misdemeanor of the
first degree” whereas violation of the HIV-specific sub-statute, 384.24(2) commits “a felony of
the third degree” (Florida Statutes, 2023b). Violating 384.2(1) and the resulting misdemeanor
carry a $1,000 penalty and that’s the extent of the legalese. According to Florida law, as defined
in statute 775.082(II)2(e), a third-degree felony carries a $5,000 fine and imprisonment up to 5
years whereas any person who commits multiple acts of not disclosure faces a first-degree felony
(Florida Statutes, 2023b). According to Florida law, 775.082(b)2, this offense is “punishable by a
term of years not exceeding life imprisonment” (Florida Statutes, 2023a).
Analyzing the language in these laws is important as they indicate a different statute for
PLHIV and require more severe punishment such as a third-degree felony charge without
disclosure on the first offense. I chose to analyze these laws because they are directly related to
publics and counterpublics the previous chapter discusses. In other words, the relationship
60
between laws and lived experiences creates a relationship that these queer communities respond
to in particular ways. These laws also impact folx in these communities while not affecting
others at all, and the language of the law itself warranted a rhetorical/textual analysis and
juxtaposing these laws to the ways community members respond using collective mētis is a goal
of my research. The rationale, then, for developing the theory of collective mētis is to codify the
discursive strategies a LGTQ+ community in Central Florida makes.
Approach to Analysis
As detailed in Chapter 2: Literature Review, I am building a theory of collective mētis
which include the following characteristics:
1. Rhetorical collective agencies
2. Translative state
3. Trickster-body as community actant
My approach to analysis of both the interview data and legal statute is to test the theory
of collective mētis which involve the same characteristics as codes for analysis. This approach is
similar to thematic analysis found in qualitative research. One goal of thematic analysis is to
provide a flexible approach “that can be modified for the needs of many studies, providing a rich
and detailed, yet complex account of data” (Nowell et al., 2017). In addition to being able to
create thematic codes that the researcher may anticipate, another goal of thematic analysis is to
examine the perspectives of different research participants, which highlights “similarities and
differences and generates unanticipated insights” (Nowell et al, 2017). In other words, there is
more flexibility for testing new theoretical frameworks such as collective mētis. Although my
analytic framework is new and innovative, my approach to thematic analysis is similar to other
RHM researchers. For example, Amy Reed (2018) delineates her work in a theoretical
61
framework and then describes her methods are aimed to allow “readers [to] acquire practical
knowledge” (p. 519). Her approach to coding grants a contrasting analysis of thematic patterns
and ways language was elicited in the study. She coded samples based on codified, professional
textbook examples, and then approached the research through textual analysis. She noticed the
development of codes across narratives and how they responded to other codes themed around
down syndrome and disability narratives. Her approach provides an example within RHM that
illustrates the process of creating codes and testing codes and builds a more robust definition of
her theoretical framework, habitus. My approach to analysis is similar to Reed’s because I’m
testing the viability of collective mētis and exploring different dimensions and examples of
enactments.
Primary Codes
I started with primary codes informed by my experience and scholarly engagement with
the community and was looking for specific information around the following three codes:
rhetorical collective agency (RCA), translative state (TS), and trickster-body as community
actant (trickster). Taken individually, these codes relate to each members’ experiences in their
communication with others in the community when selecting a potential intimate partner. I
considered the following codes as they relate to collective mētis:
1. RCA - how the participant in the interview chose their potential intimate partner
including their dismissal of potential partner serostatus
2. TS - the way the participant belongs and exists in the community and their representation
of them as a community member
3. Trickster - how individuals in these queer communities navigated around HIV disclosure
laws if they knew about them
62
To better illustrate my coding methods, I include Table 1 below. Following, I describe Table 1
and its value to this study.
Table 1. The primary codes used to test the theory of collective mētis
Name of Code
Working Definition
Importance to Study
Rhetorical collective agencies
Choices made either by group
The first characteristic of
(RCA)
members or individual
collective mētis is meant to
choices about disclosure that
extend the definition by
Codes -- first person and third reflect community norms,
connecting how multiple
person words with an active
complex ontologies and
values, and expectations
action/verb
rhetorical collective agencies
are related in the data
Translative state (TS)
Writing that speaks to
This code comes directly
community members’
from the second characteristic
Codes -- first person and third personhood either
of collective mētis and is
person words
individually or collectively,
meant to explore what they
speaking as part of the
mean as being part of a
community
community
63
Table 1. (Continued)
Trickster-body as community
Moments of intentionally
The third characteristic is
actant
usurping laws that require
related to how those in the
disclosure of HIV by way of
community respond to
Codes -- mentioning
circumventing the law, or not
creating a trickster-body that
something about disclosure
discussing it at all and talking
create publics and
policies or laws even if not
around it
counterpublics to empower
specific to statute language
community principles
Rhetorical Collective Agencies
Rhetorical collective agencies listed in Table 1 was the first code I looked and attempted
to answer the following research questions:
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
I answered these questions by looking for times when community members switched in between
the choices they made either as an individual autonomous person or a person representing the
community. These choices were noted by the mix of “I” as representing themselves solely as
64
their own opinion reflecting their expectations, or “we” when representing the community’s
agreed on norms, values, and expectations around disclosure. I looked for evidence of this
primary code first because this dissertation rests on the presupposition that community members
chose their potential intimate partner selection rooted in community customs regardless of HIV
disclosure laws. This code was important to better understanding how community members
identified which is described in Table 1 and in the next section.
Translative State
The second primary code necessary for testing the theory of collective mētis is
determined by the choices they have made in addition to the values and collective. Connected to
the previous code, this characteristic attempts to answer the following research question:
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
This code was necessary because as a member of the community in which I was researching, I
knew that different community members changed the things they valued based on whether they
were choosing to represent themselves as an individual or as a part of the community. This
knowledge led me to consider how choosing modalities that represent the norms, values, and
expectations in the community might change the representation of individual choices or going
through the translative state to represent the community’s agreed on norms, values, and
expectations. I was also curious about the amount of community members’ values and the
potential similarities and differences between online and face-to-face modalities. This code is
related to the first characteristic in how it responds and manages community members’
expectations when communicating with other potentially intimate partner community folx. I
looked for moments of representation of the whole community and any values associated with
65
the language of study participants' answers to the open-ended interview questions. The last
primary code is the trickster-body as community actant, is presented in Table 1 above, and is
explained below.
Trickster-body as Community actant
The final characteristic of collective mētis and last primary code meant to explore what
community choices, collectively, do when an oppositional force pushes against community
interests and customs after completing the translative state. This code is meant to answer the
following research questions:
● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
○ Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
Predicated on the above codes as a way to enter the community conversation around HIV
disclosure laws, potential intimate partner selection, and resulting community action that allow
the community to empower themselves against laws attempting to regulate their intimate partner
selection practices. I looked for this code by noticing moments of power, as a result of publics
and counterpublics, moving through community choices and HIV disclosure law. One interview
question (see Appendix B) directly asked community members if they knew not disclosing a
positive HIV status was illegal. Analyzing these responses allowed me to gauge what community
members might know about the law. This is important to this code as it informs how the trickster
may or may not move through the communities as well as the goals of the trickster in the
community after an oppositional force pushes against community collective mētis.
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From these codes arose secondary codes, or codes that came out of the primary ones
listed because they were related to collective mētis characteristics but were ones that I did not
anticipate.
Secondary Codes
As I coded through primary codes listed above, I noticed a number of secondary codes
that came out of the primary. According to Lorelli S. Nowell et al. (2017), it’s not unusual to find
additional codes during thematic coding processes. The data analysis enabled me to thicken and
make adjustments to my preliminary codes. This was certainly the case as I coded for this
project. I found that a series of secondary codes, and sometimes tertiary codes, emerged out of
each primary code. See Figure 2 below for an example of secondary codes found and a
description following the visual.
Figure 2. Visual of thematic coding process
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My thematic coding process started with looking at primary codes first and focusing on one code
at a time, so I completed a total of three coding passes throughout all data. For the first primary
code, rhetorical collective agencies (RCA), one secondary code evolved. It is choices within the
community, and split participants within two camps: agency and PrEP and agency and PLHIV. A
territory code from the RCA primary represented the issue of disclosure accountability which
involved the burden of who should discuss potential HIV positive status when engaging with a
potential intimate partner. The translative state (TS) primary code included an expected
secondary code: community members’ preferred modality when identifying as a community
member; however, from this code came one of the three preferences: online modality, in person
modality, or a mix of modalities. The last primary code, trickster-body as community actant
(Trickster), presented participants’ knowledge about HIV disclosure law as a secondary code.
From this secondary code emerged three categories of responses that participants: knew the HIV
disclosure law, didn’t know the law per se but knew disclosure was required, they didn’t know
disclosure was required at all. Law knowledge presented a tertiary code, publics and
counterpublics based on the secondary code. It is important to note that the arrows in Figure 2
intentionally move from left to right as the primary codes build on themselves while the
secondary and tertiary codes build off of previous codes; however, secondary and tertiary codes
are not contingent on each other in a procedural way like the primary codes.
Taken together, these thematic codes attempted to show the theory of the collective mētis
by juxtaposing the characteristics to real conversations about publics, counterpublics, Florida
HIV disclosure laws, and community potential intimate partner selection. As such, my approach
to analysis was meant to test my theory of collective mētis and whether or not community
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members engaged with this theory. These codes helped me get at how individual negotiations in
these communities could participate and inform broader community standards.
This research project reified that researcher positionality is, in fact, key to building
successful community methodologies and analyzing the resulting data. By this, I mean that
understanding one’s own approach to research must be at the top of the research design if the
work is to be helpful to the community/communities. For example, while IRBs attempt to help
RHM researchers consider ethical implications in their research, IRBs typically don’t go far
enough in protecting participants (Opel, 2018) due to the complex nature of community-based
work; they oftentimes fail to protect the communities they intend to protect as they typically
focus on biomedical models and not health communication ones (King et al., 2018).
In line with this idea, the next section will discuss some of the limitations of
community-based research broadly and move into some of the limitations I encountered in
creating and carrying out this project.
Limitations
One limitation of community-based research is that oftentimes the research team “is not
a permanent entity” (Kuehl et al., 2015), meaning that the research team is not a long-term
presence, which can frustrate the communicative process of engaging the community as citizenscholars (Ackerman & Coogan, 2013). Throughout this research project, I made it clear to the
community that I would only be a part of the community for a number of years until I graduated
as I would likely relocate for a job somewhere else. Engaging community members in this
research aimed to limit methodological ethical issues by being transparent in my role in the
community and the future of community plans after I left.
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Another limitation of community-based work is the potential reification of Platonic
rhetoric, or the idea that those within the academy epistemologically understand the work the
community is doing more so than the community itself; this idea bolsters the notion that
researchers are “experts” in the community (DeVasto et al., 2019). RHM as a field has
overwhelmingly moved past these limitations through reflexive and reflective practice in
examining evidence (Scott, Molloy, & Melonçon, 2021). Still, I needed to make sure that I
thought through research design in a way that employed practices which didn’t make community
members feel as though their voices didn’t matter. One reflexive practice I employed was to
constantly ask for feedback from the community and their ideas about expertise in the
community work. I also constantly reflected on the purpose of the study and its goals.
These limitations all speak to the concern that misunderstanding or omitting one’s own
exigences and communities that one works in can hurt the community more than it helps. I also
mention that generalizability could potentially limit this research because of the smaller number
of interviewees. Understanding how these limitations can potentially affect my work was key to
me developing a successful methodology for this project.
Conclusion
This chapter started with an introduction to my research questions and then moved into
the importance of this project as grounded in community-based research in rhetorical studies and
RHM more specifically. I explained my rationale for conducting this project through my
positionality and its importance to queer community-based research. Next, I described my
research methods. Interviews were chosen as a research method to illustrate the nuances of
community communication. Textual analysis involved interview transcripts as well as the
language in Florida HIV disclosure laws. Following this was my approach to analysis which
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included my process of thematic coding. A coding process such as this allowed me to test the
theory of collective mētis by analyzing its three characteristics as primary codes in relation to the
interview. I noticed secondary codes, or unexpected codes, that came from primary codes which
also informed collective mētis. I ended the chapter with limitations of the methodology which
include researchers’ limited community participation time and awareness of community
contributions as equal to, if not more important than, community member advice in research
design.
The next chapter will examine the findings of data collection and analysis. This data
comes out of interviews and situates the data within the purview of collective mētis as a potential
rhetorical analytic tool for marginalized communities’ communication through examination of
interviews, transcripts, and Florida HIV disclosure laws.
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Chapter Four: Findings
I asked a community study participant, “Are you single, partnered, or
something else entirely?” To which they responded, “I’m single, but
popular.”
This chapter reports interview findings described in the previous chapter and the Florida
HIV disclosure laws that guided my questions. The following research questions will be
addressed:
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
○ What types of disclosures do they express and negotiate, and how?
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
○ Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
These questions allowed me to see how the community works within and outside of the law. The
research questions this chapter addresses is done so by relating them, respectively, to the theory
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of collective mētis.33 This chapter outlines the finding that collective mētis and its characteristics
form publics and counterpublics based on the needs of the community.
In order to present findings, I first describe how keywords from the study exemplify the
ways community members communicate within the community and which words and concepts
are most important to members. Then, I relate these findings to their purpose as it pertains to
Florida HIV disclosure law requirements. This chapter then examines the efficacy of collective
mētis through primary codes, secondary codes, and tertiary codes which emerged during data
analysis. This chapter ends by setting up the next chapter which describes the significance of
these findings in detail.
Summary Keywords
The following section is a qualitative assessment of the summary keywords from the 15
participants and has two primary goals: 1) to demonstrate the number of repeated words that
were or were not said across every interview; and 2) the relevance of these words to the
LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida. These two goals intersect with my research questions as
they demonstrated the most important words connected to community members’ when selecting
potential intimate partners. The words below demonstrate evidence of a collective sense of
community by the words interviewees chose to focus on--zeroing in on the collective aspect of
collective mētis. There were some words repeated throughout all interviews while some words
were barely mentioned, but the relationship to this dissertation is important so the findings are
discussed below. The following subsections explore these words chronologically from
mentioned most to least often and end with a visual word cloud representing the most prominent
33
This definition is defined in Chapter 2: Literature Review.
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words. To reiterate, the words and their importance that follows were most often mentioned in
each individual interview and then aggregated to find patterns across all 15 interviews.
Partner
This word was recorded 17 times in the 15 interviews. It’s not a surprise this word
came up most often and was mentioned more times than there were participants. Everyone in the
study was connecting the idea of a partner back to our mutual understanding of community
custom that a partner could indicate long term or short term. Noticing this word said so often
signals study participants knew the importance of key terms about potential intimate partners and
how they discussed selecting one through their individual and community choices. It also
indicates they considered the modalities for these selections as well. All participants mentioning
this word bolsters there is a common way of discussing issues since the interview questions were
open-ended.
Status
Status was recorded 16 times in the 15 interviews and was used a lot more than its
counterpart, “positive” (see below). The word choice is interesting as people overwhelmingly
refrained from saying “positive” or “HIV positive.” The pivot in the word choice is a sign that
this word is common in community communication; however, how they contextualized the word
varied from participant to participant. Additionally, this finding points to ideas that status is
discussed in the community often, but in different ways. Still, the repeated nature of this word
cues me to an agreed upon way of discussing HIV statues.
Sex(ual)
This word was mentioned 15 times in the 15 interviews. It’s interesting that this word
was used differently than the others as most interviewees switched between saying “sex” or
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“sexual,” which suggests this word is often contextualized in a way community members need
the word to work for them. Regardless of situational use, the various ways community members
employed the word interchangeably finds that there was a level of agreement about how people
in this community speak. The agreement of this word and its other forms speak to the nature of
conversations in the community as actively discussing potential intimate partner selection even if
tacit.
HIV
Showing up the same as the word above, HIV was recorded 15 times in 15
interviews. This study’s purpose is to explore and analyze people’s status and their relationship
to Florida HIV disclosure laws, so it’s not surprising this word was mentioned so often. Finding
that this word is discussed in the community with relative normalcy is key to how the community
agrees to communicate since no participant shied away from not only saying the word, but also
discussing its importance within the community. This is not an unexpected finding, but
considering the stigma that’s still attached to the word makes community engagement with the
term an event that happens often.
Community
Mentioned 11 times across all interviews, it’s no surprise this word popped up a
lot as the purpose of all secondary codes were related to the community this research study
sampled. The importance of the word community is related to participant comfort because
everyone who participated in this study felt a connection to themselves and their
connections/roles in the community they were actively discussing potential intimate partner
communication. Not a surprising finding, but one that would be surprising if it didn’t show up in
the summary of keywords since the study is about a specific LGBTQ+ community.
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Positive
The following two words are the inverse of the words listed above because they
were noted so little it caught my attention. Positive was only mentioned 4 times across all
interviews which is a compelling find considering this study is about PLHIV in the community
and potential intimate partner selection. To this end, a key finding is the amount of times this
word was not used in the interviews. The lack of use of this word signals that participants are
familiar with the word, but actively chose to use “status” (see above) instead when discussing
potential intimate partners who may be HIV positive. This finding is related to the community,
law, and trickster-body mentioned above as participants knew what the word connotatively
meant but opted not to use it.
Law
Similar to the word positive, this word was not discussed very little. Participants said this
word 1 time across all interviews. Much like the obfuscation of the word positive this word
indicates that participants knew the word existed but didn’t mention it very often. There was very
little mentioned about any laws or naming anything specific to a law, which could be one way
people in the community get around the laws in the first place and is likely tied to the community
developing the trickster even in the interviews. After all, if community members don’t say
anything about the law, can’t they claim plausible deniability?
I included these words and their relevance to this study because these key words helped
me realize the themes that I wanted to focus on and those themes follow and start with the last
word here: law.
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Florida HIV Disclosure Law
These laws are important to this dissertation because there is a clear difference in
how the laws are intended to affect various groups in Florida.34 The worry over these laws is that
they unintentionally or intentionally target already vulnerable communities in the state. The
language in these laws function as the oppositional force pushing against the LGBTQ+
community in Central Florida.
All states have laws intended to maintain a civic peace and order. In Florida, there are
statutes that warrant how people should act and what is considered appropriate, particularly in
regard to notions of public health. One law affecting public health in Florida is the issue of
sexually transmissible diseases. In this statue there are two laws, and one is specific for persons
living with HIV (PLHIV35). The state of Florida writes, in statue 384.21:
(1)
It is unlawful for any person who has chancroid, gonorrhea, granuloma inguinale,
lymphogranuloma venereum, genital herpes simplex, chlamydia, nongonococcal
urethritis (NGU), pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)/acute salpingitis, or syphilis, when
such person knows he or she is infected with one or more of these diseases and when
such person has been informed that he or she may communicate this disease to another
person through sexual intercourse, to have sexual intercourse with any other person,
unless such other person has been informed of the presence of the sexually transmissible
disease and has consented to the sexual intercourse.
34
Further reference to Florida HIV disclosure law will be collapsed to simply HIV disclosure laws or disclosure
laws for ease of reading.
35
As a reminder, there are many different ways to refer to people who are HIV positive, but this dissertation uses
the acronym PLHIV as this is the current term offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
attempts to minimize stigma. See https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/maintainingessential-HIV-services.html for more information.
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(2)
It is unlawful for any person who has human immunodeficiency virus infection,
when such person knows he or she is infected with this disease and when such person has
been informed that he or she may communicate this disease to another person through
sexual intercourse, to have sexual intercourse with any other person, unless such other
person has been informed of the presence of the sexually transmissible disease and has
consented to the sexual intercourse (Florida Statutes, 2023b).
I include the full language of the statute to call attention to key language. The problematic
language--explained next-- in the law inspired some of the research questions for this project and
the need to include interviews. The interviews for this dissertation describe reactions to the laws
and their consequences. As one can see, statute 384.21(1) above argues for the disclosure of
people who knowingly may infect another person with the diseases listed in the statute and
include many sexually transmitted diseases, with the exception of HIV. Statute 384.21(2) is
specific to PLHIV and disclosure. The above disclosure law states that PLHIV must inform
others of their positive status in order to “to have sexual intercourse with any other person,
unless such other person has been informed of the presence of the sexually transmissible disease
and has consented to the sexual intercourse” (Florida Statutes, 2023b). The problem with the
language is that the law doesn’t take into account the various protections afforded to people who
engage in intimate relationships with PLHIV. For example, the language in the law quoted above
doesn’t allow for protections such as: condom use; negative partners on pre-exposure
prophylaxis (PrEP36); taking post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP37) the day after a risky sexual
encounter; engaging in sexual behavior that minimizes the risk of infection such as oral sex. In
36
37
The relevance of this form of protection will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter.
The relevance of this form of protection will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter.
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this statute, PLHIV must disclose their positive status to any potential intimate partners or face
severe penalties as the law states in s.38 384.34 listed below:
384.34
(1)
Penalties.—
Any person who violates the provisions of s. 384.24(1) commits a misdemeanor
of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.
(2)
Any person who violates the provisions of s. 384.26 or s. 384.29 commits a
misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.
(3)
Any person who maliciously disseminates any false information or report
concerning the existence of any sexually transmissible disease commits a felony of the
third degree, punishable as provided in ss [abbreviation for state statute]. 775.082,
775.083, and 775.084.
(4)
Any person who violates the provisions of the department’s rules pertaining to
sexually transmissible diseases may be punished by a fine not to exceed $500 for each
violation. Any penalties enforced under this subsection shall be in addition to other
penalties provided by this chapter. The department may enforce this section and adopt
rules necessary to administer this section.
(5)
Any person who violates s. 384.24(2) commits a felony of the third degree,
punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. Any person who commits
multiple violations of s. 384.24(2) commits a felony of the first degree, punishable as
provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
The full language of this law is listed here to describe the significance of law violations. To this
end, statute 384.34 (5) notes that “Any person who violates [statue] 384.24(2) commits a felony
38
Note: “s.” is shorthand for statute in the Florida constitution.
79
of the third degree” (Florida Statutes, 2022a). The significance of this law opposed to the others
is that it represents punishment specific to statute 382.24(2), or the disclosure law specific to
HIV as opposed to other sexually transmitted diseases. The law informs the public what the
penalty is for not disclosing a positive status, and there is a different penalty associated with any
sexually transmitted disease that isn’t HIV. These laws were re-ratified in 2022 and updated on
the state website in 2023 by the Florida Legislature. This law primarily affects communities that
have populations of PLHIV, and there are communities that have argued against these laws in
various ways, which the next chapter will take up in more detail. It’s important to point out that
there are different statutes for the PLHIV specific to their status which is different from other
sexually transmitted diseases that don’t involve possible HIV transmission. PLHIV face harsher
punishments for not disclosing their status compared to other sexually transmitted diseases.
Connecting the above laws to collective mētis is especially important because this theory
can assist marginalized communities when confronted with injustices. These laws are not
abstract thoughts; instead, they act in tangible ways that attempt to disenfranchise already
vulnerable communities. I say this because “of the 34,800 estimated new [HIV] infections in the
U.S. in 2019, 70% (24,500) were among gay and bisexual men” (CDC, 2022h) The way these
laws create injustices in the community is evident in laws that single out community potential
intimate partner selection with severe consequences. Arguing that these laws protect public
health is to actively relegate PLHIV in the LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida to a secondrate citizen status. This is not acceptable, and collective mētis has the potential for the
community to empower itself against these oppressive forces such as these Florida HIV
disclosure laws.
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The following sections describe collective mētis and the relevance of this theory
to these laws by coding the interviews. These characteristics are rhetorical collective agencies,
translative state, and trickster-body as community actant.
Rhetorical Collective Agencies
This section discusses how the characteristic of rhetorical collective agencies was
employed in the interviews and addresses the following research questions:
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
This code is important to the definition of collective mētis because it sets up how those in the
community chose to represent themselves and their role as an individual or a community
member. To this end, choosing to speak individually or as a community is how this code
demonstrates the choices those in the community made both individually and collectively. This
code is important because it reflects how community members chose their potential intimate
partner relationships within the community based on personal or community norms, values, and
expectations. This is evidenced by the way they discussed how community members chose their
potential intimate partners.
Choices Within the Community
Many of the participants mentioned both their individual choices and the choices
made as a member of the community when selecting a potential intimate partner. This data
demonstrated that many in the community respond to agentic moments such as potential intimate
partner choices as both important for the community and themselves. For example, one
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interviewee responses to the choice of choosing potential intimate partners in the community by
saying:
As a guide, I'm not indifferent to it. In this community they should have a choice. You
know, I think that some people are more open and willing to discuss that [HIV status]
with the world and I think that you know, others are more intimate with it and would
rather discuss that with somebody one on one, so it doesn't really make a difference to
me. (Participant 3)
The above quote is representative of a lot of the responses when asked about communication
potential intimate partner desires in the community as the person is saying that the choice should
be the individual’s and is one principled community example of rhetorical agency. Another
example comes from Participant 13 who noted that in their experience, choices aren’t usually
negotiated for a long time as in, “the gay community, you know, we tend to just get right to it. I
don’t know if that’s a scarcity thing.” This comment is important as it illustrates the example of
choosing as a community and representing community choices. The pivot from individual
choices to community ones was a common theme when discussing choices of community if they
were engaging with someone on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or a PLHIV that was discussed
either in a face-to-face setting or online. The next section details the responses from both of these
agentive categories.
Agency and PrEP
The interesting find is that while out of the 15 interviewees, 13 or 86% said a potential
intimate on PrEP wasn’t an issue, many interviewees argued PrEP as a positive factor in
determining potential sexual engagement. These results come from the interview question that
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asks community members how they engage with members who are on PrEP39 and whether or not
they would potentially interact with that person (see Appendix B). The response to this category
was overwhelmingly that persons on PrEP did not pose any issue when selecting a potential
intimate partner. In fact, many participants took agency a step further and argued that a potential
intimate partner on PrEP, “doesn’t change my opinion on them and if anything, it makes me feel
more secure and any potential sexual relationship we may have” (Participant 12). Another
interviewee argued that PrEP is so common in the community that those not on PrEP aren’t
really considered part of the community writ large. This person notes that someone taking PrEP
is similar to saying, “Oh, I take a multivitamin. It’s like it’s something that’s a good thing to do.
It’s a good measure to be safe and it means they’re at least thinking about their health”
(Participant 13). These comments are important to this chapter, category code, and theory of
collective mētis because they show how people resist laws such as the HIV disclosure law that
don’t offer alternatives to disclosing a positive HIV status. In other words, community members
are arguing that if a potential intimate partner is taking PrEP as they should be, then the HIV
disclosure law doesn’t change their choice or the choice of the community when selecting a
potential intimate partner.
The next theme that came up out of the rhetorical agencies code and the choice therein is
potential selection of a PLHIV when the person has mentioned their HIV status as positive. This
is the focus on the next section.
Agency and PLHIV
14 of the 15 participants (~93%) said something that indicated they didn’t care
about the positive status of a potential intimate partner. These results are keyed to the interview
39
See Chapter 1 for the definition of this preventive HIV medication.
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question that asks community members how they engage with members who are HIV positive
and whether or not they would potentially interact with that person (see Appendix B). Similar to
the question around PrEP mentioned above, people in the community seemed less concerned
with PLHIV status than they did about the interaction itself. For example, one person mentioned
that they “wouldn't discard that person because of their status. It just tells me that they're being
upfront and honest if anything” (Participant 4). Complicating this notion of honesty, one person
said in response to a HIV positive profile, “I just think I have to just be more cautious but it
[status] doesn’t deter me [from potential intimate engagement]” (Participant 7). In fact,
Participant 10 said that PLHIV can “live a full life and not give anybody HIV” so they wouldn’t
care if a potential intimate partner was HIV positive, especially since consistently taking PrEP
“negates that [HIV] out.” Moving this idea forward, Participant 1 said that if a potential intimate
partner is HIV positive, “It's not really a problem. Where it gets to be more of an issue is if their
profile is still more of like exclusively unprotected sex, and that's where it's like, well, it's not the
HIV I'm worried about.” These comments show that whether PrEP or a PLHIV, these individuals
choose to still engage with potential intimate partners. These comments and sections are
important to the concept of collective mētis and rhetorical collective agencies in much the same
way the previous section is. When selecting a potential intimate partner, community members
are defying the Florida law that requires PLHIV to disclose their status.
While analyzing the above tertiary codes, I noticed a trend in the way people in the
community discussed accountability of PLHIV to disclose their status to a potential intimate
partner. The topic came up so often that I decided to code a second time to better identify what
was happening within the community and mention accountability. I chose the theme,
accountability, because there was a clear indication that someone should be responsible for
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discussing the potential HIV status. The following section takes up this code and discusses its
importance to collective mētis and HIV disclosure laws.
Disclosure Accountability
This section comes from coding interview data around agency and disclosure. I
noticed this section directly answers the following sub research question:
●
What types of disclosures do they express and negotiate, and how?
From analyzing the data, one common theme kept occurring as folx talked around a common
theme associated with choices and agency within the community: disclosure accountability. I
found that there were five broad ways participants discussed the theme of disclosure
accountability: 1) PLHIV should voluntarily disclose their status to a potential intimate partner;
2) the burden of disclose is the job of both the PLHIV and the negative potential intimate
partner; 3) the negative partner should ask about status from their potential intimate partner; 4) it
doesn't matter either way if someone is HIV positive, so disclosure responsibility is moot; and 5)
not sure who should be the one to disclose and start the conversation. Table 2 represents the
totals of those who discussed the responsibility of those engaging in potential intimate
relationships.
It should be noted that disclosure accountability as a theme was distributed through the
interview with most respondents saying that the burden of HIV disclosure is the responsibility of
both the PLHIV and the person looking for a potential intimate partner (assuming the potential
intimate partner looking is HIV negative). The following subsections discuss each theme related
to disclosure accountability for this community.
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Table 2. Total of categories for disclosure accountability
Totals
Burden on
Burden on Both
Burden on
Doesn’t Matter
Inconclusive/
PLHIV to
to Discuss
Negative Partner
Either Way
Not Sure
20% (n=3
7% (n=1)
Disclose
27% (n=4)
to Ask
33% (n=5)
13% (n=2)
Burden on PLHIV to Disclose
To reiterate, HIV disclosure laws in Florida require the PLHIV to disclose their
positive status to a potential intimate partner. Approximately 27% of participants in this study
agreed that the disclosure burden rests solely with the PLHIV. For example, Participant 9 said,
“They [PLHIV] should put it out there, but if they want to talk about it, it’s their conversation to
start,” which is a sentiment another interviewee agreed with. They said, “You know, you don't
know what can happen a month or two or three months from now. So that you have to disclose
something like that to someone and let them make that choice at the end of the day” (Participant
14). There was one person who agreed that PLHIV should disclose their status but didn’t agree
with the consequence of violating the law. They said, “I don't know if a third-degree felony is
something that I agree with, but I definitely think that you know, I think it's, I think there should
be something [if not] discussed” (Participant 12). The next category is that both the PLHIV and a
potential intimate partner should both have responsibility for discussing and disclosing their
status.
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Burden on Both to Discuss
This category represents approximately 33% of the study sample and argues that
both potential intimate partners should disclose their HIV status. Participant 10 argues that HIV
disclosure “goes both ways'' and that “the individual who’s taking part in potentially risky
actions . . . there’s a certain point where I’m kind of like, make sure you are being safe yourself.”
This was a sentiment echoed by others who said that “I think it's, the [negative] person's right
you know, the person who was positive to let people know if they do engage in a sexual act, but
it's also the other person's responsibility to ask. I mean, it's a two-way street” (Participant 5). The
theme was most succinctly noted by Participant 7 who said that “I think it [disclosure] is always
up to both people if it’s consensual.” An interesting finding in this category is that no one
mentioned anything about if both potential intimate partners are PLHIV, so the caveat here is
that one person is assuming a negative status while engaging with a partner that is HIV positive.
The next theme that emerged from the data in response to rhetorical collective agencies is that
the burden of disclosure with a potential intimate partner rests with the negative partner to ask
about status prior to engagement.
Burden on Negative Partner to Ask
While this theme only included 13%, or 2 of the interview participants, it is an important
finding because of its diametric difference to what the law requires. One person argues that it is a
community member’s responsibility to prevent themselves from contracting HIV. They said, “I
should obviously take measures so I would protect myself from contracting HIV;” however they
also note that disclosure “wasn’t always discussed” (Participant 8). This is an important finding
when juxtaposed to Florida’s HIV disclosure laws. Another participant resonates with this idea
as they comment, “As long as I’m doing what I need to do to protect myself, it’s not going to
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exclude anybody” (Participant 11). The next theme that emerged from interview data is that HIV
disclosure doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.
Doesn’t Matter Either Way
Representing 20% of the interviewees, this theme emerged as a finding because of
its relevance to disclosure law. All three participants advanced the argument that disclosure
shouldn’t matter for a number of reasons; thus, no one should be required to disclose their
serostatus. One participant said that “if there is chemistry, it doesn't even cross my mind and
that’s enough for an answer” (Participant 2), while another claims that they are educated enough
to make the call for themselves. They mention, “I usually let that person, you know, be the
forthcoming one with that information. However, I mean, if it's something that's just mildly
discussed or not discussed much at all, I feel that I can make that educated decision to engage
with them” (Participant 3). Lastly, one person directly addresses the law and their idea that
potential intimate partner selection in queer communities should be left to the community. They
give a caveat: Florida HIV disclosure laws were perhaps “a right decision” during the HIV/AIDS
epidemic, but that the laws “flew for the wrong reasons, and it's now no longer anything but the
wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I think it really is about punishing a community” (Participant
13). The next theme emerged as a participant wasn’t sure where the HIV disclosure
accountability should be placed.
Inconclusive/Not Sure
This theme is listed as a finding because it is the outlier to the other themes and their
relationships to disclosure accountability. At 7%, or one person said they’re not sure who the
burden of disclosure rests with. They note they “definitely think you should inform people [but] I
think it has to be in place that you have to inform people that you're HIV positive.” As they
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talked, they also contradicted their previous point and said, “I don't think someone should be
forced to legally tell stuff about themselves” (Participant 6). This theme was mentioned because
it finds that disclosure accountability and its relationship with the law may be more tenuous than
other participants argued.
Moving forward with coding, the next primary code is translative state and also
exemplifies three different ways this state interacts with preferred modalities when selecting a
potential intimate partner.
Translative State
This section discusses how the characteristic of rhetorical collective agencies was
employed in the interviews and addresses the following research question:
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
The findings from this data describe that almost half (48%) of participants preferred to meet a
potential intimate partner with digital modalities such as Grindr and Scruff whereas four
participants (26%) preferred meeting in person because they mentioned the quality of people in
the community and getting to know them before a potential intimate moment. Four people (26%)
had mixed reviews and said it depends on safety and convenience. This particular section was
developed to describe how members of the LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida discuss their
involvement in the communities they participate in. This section was vital to the theory of
collective mētis because it describes how people in the community talk about themselves as
individuals as well as the community as a whole. Often, study participants speak with one voice
and don’t fully reflect community norms, values, and expectations, or at least not enough to
change their agentic moment. When community members do enter the translative state, they take
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on community interests. This is an important code because it sets the stage for how the
community reacts to Florida HIV disclosure laws and identifies that community members will
change their choices based on the preferred modality for potential intimate partner selection.
Preferred Modality in the Community
As I coded for the translative state, I found that a lot of folx identified their interaction with the
community based on selected modality. The table below aggregates the totals of these categories
and is described below the table. This finding is important to the above research question
because it demonstrates how people in the community identify within various ways in the
community and illustrates that the translative state may have more than an either/or binary.
Based on their preferred modality either online through potential “hook up” apps, in person, or a
mix of both was a theme that occurred often when discussing their role within the community.
This identification regularly marked the way participants discussed how they might select a
potential intimate partner--whether representing themselves or the community. Interestingly, the
modality seemed to change responses overall. Out of the interviews came three categories of
preferred modality: online, in person, or a mix of both, which the next three subsections describe.
Table 3. Total of preferred modality in communication
Prefers Online Modality
Prefers In Person Modality
Mix of Both Modalities
48% (n=7)
26% (n=4)
26% (n=4)
Online Modality
This theme emerged with 48%, or 7 out of 15 participants, saying this modality
was the best for them when thinking about their choices for two reasons: personal convenience
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and community expectation. For example, one interviewee noted that personally, “I like to use
Grindr and Scruff. That's pretty much it. I use those because they have more of the demographic
I'm looking for when having sex or seeking sex,” (Participant 9) which signals their thinking
about themself as an individual in a community. Another commented that “convenience would
be first and foremost. I live a pretty busy lifestyle and actually going out in person and doing it
does take a lot of time. I'm in a world where everything is dealt out via efficiency and time and
you need to utilize your time correctly. That's the biggest reason. There's also a factor there of
ease of use” (Participant 10). An interesting finding is that others cited online modalities and part
of community practices when identifying a potential intimate partner. To this end, one
respondent noted that, “It's just easier to meet people like I don't really go out much and start so
it's just easier to meet people in the community” (Participant 4), which signals online modalities
such as Grindr and Scruff as community standards. To this end, Participant 7 commented about
the popular online apps, “Those are just ones that I've heard were the most popular from the gay
people that I've talked to. I've downloaded other ones, but I have ended up deleting them.”
Another person responds in a similar vein, “Scruff and Grindr had people within my immediate
community so it makes access to people easier that I can actually meet up with and talk to”
(Participant 11). These two findings are important when considering both individual values and
those of the community. The modality discussed next is the in-person modality.
In Person Modality
This theme includes 26%, or 4 of 15 participants. These interviewees all agreed
that meeting in person was preferable to meeting online but noted that the community writ large
tends to use online more. One respondent argues that meeting in person is better for quality and
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mentions they meet people through extracurricular community activities, such as a gay softball
league. To quote them,
I prefer to meet in person . . . I've never had good luck finding quality people on any of
those like the gay targeted sites. Like obviously I feel it's more of a sex hookup site or
I've usually always been looking forward to something more substantial as far as a
relationship, not just a hookup. I also am looked at as very fake like, and half the time
people don't even have real profiles on there. So, I'd rather meet someone in person.
(Participant 8)
Another participant echoed this sentiment and said, “I prefer to meet in person. I would much
rather do it in person than to get to know somebody over some messages” (Participant 12).
Another idea is that online modalities idealize the potential intimate partner that doesn’t match
their in-person physical characteristics, mannerisms and/or behavior. To this end, Participant 13
succinctly remarks that “You need the kind of spontaneity that comes from the in-person
interactions.” The findings here indicate there is a preference for meeting in person, but that
community standards tend to enlist online modalities. Put another way, most would prefer
meeting in person, “but that's not always the easiest. So, the easiest ones are going to be those
online platforms in the community” (Participant 15). The next theme in these findings is that a
surprising number of community members prefer a mix of modalities for individual investments
and community expectations.
Mix of Modalities
This theme emerged from 4 of 15 participants, or 26%. Online and in person
modalities were not unusual, but this finding was surprising. Most interviewees pointed to this
modality because of “profile trust” (Participant 1) as a result of safety. Based on the findings, this
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concept was consistent for all four participants and one respondent went so far as to argue that
legal issues are why they engage in both modalities. They mention that people engage in illegal
activity through the app. “For example, I know something that's popular with some people is
Sniffies. I don't use that. But people use that mostly to go cruising so they go and try to find
someone to screw in a park. That's not my thing. I don't want to get arrested . . . I don't want to
get shanked so then I also look for just like you can tell a lot from a person from what they're
saying [before meeting in person]” (Participant 1). Another interviewee mentioned a similar
safety concern and the value of mixed modalities. They said, I've met people in person, I've met
people online, I've done it. You know, they're just all different kinds of situations like safety and
stuff” (Participant 5). Another finding for the mix of modalities is the ease of initially engaging
before meeting. Participant 3 directly advocates this by saying, “I don’t have a preference, but I
do tend to meet online. And then I meet in bars, clubs, and bathhouses.” Regarding their
relationship to laws and the community, Participant 14 speaks directly to mixing modalities
when selecting a potential intimate partner. He responded,
I like a balance between both. So, whether meeting somebody in person or digital for
convenience, it's all kind of the [same] thing to me, you know? Because at the end of the
day, safety is still important. Knowing who that person is one foot away from you. I feel
like it's just more trustworthy. More truth and seeing this person in like, you know,
directly in front of you, and getting to interact with them. And especially if you're no,
you're in a public place or something. You can see how they, you know, interact with
their surroundings when with other people, and I think that's very important. (Participant
14)
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The next section discusses the last of the primary codes that inform collective mētis, the tricksterbody and the code's relevance to the publics, counterpublics, Florida HIV disclosure laws and the
LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida.
Trickster-body as Community Actant
This section sets up the last code for collective mētis and was selected because of the
nature of the HIV disclosure laws and the community that I know, from my own membership,
doesn't always follow disclosure laws. This code answers the following research question and
sub question:
● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
○ Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
The purpose of this code was to attempt to identify if community members knew about HIV
disclosure laws and how they interacted (or didn’t interact) with them. The findings in this
section are important to collective mētis and its relationship to HIV disclosure law in Florida
because the trickster is developed in communities by the need to circumvent laws that attempt to
medicalize their bodies. Realizing this, a secondary code emerged through coding which
determined whether community members knew about disclosure laws and included any open
responses to their understanding of Florida HIV disclosure laws. The next section presents these
findings and the themes that emerged as a result as well as their significance.
Participants’ Knowledge about HIV Disclosure Law
As I coded the primary code above, this secondary theme presented itself in the study and
directly responded to the research question that asked whether they were aware of the Florida
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HIV disclosure law. The table below aggregates the findings of secondary themes for the
trickster-body primary code and then explains the relevance:
Table 4. Table of participants and their knowledge of FL HIV disclosure law
Participants Who Knew
Participants Knew
Participants Who Didn’t
about the Disclosure Law
Disclosure Was Required
Know about Disclosure Law
for PLHIV
47% (n=7)
40% (n=6)
13% (n=2)
Out of 15 folx that participated in the study, only two people didn’t know about the HIV
disclosure law in Florida. Of all participants, 87%, or 13 people, knew that there was some type
of disclosure law in Florida, although approximately 40% (6 participants) of people in the study
knew there was some type of law but didn’t know the language of the law explicitly. This theme
became prevalent in juxtaposition with the research sub question at the beginning of this section
when building the definition of the trickster because I knew there was some discursive
maneuvering at play. Based on the findings, three categories emerged: 1) participants who knew
there was a specific disclosure law; 2) participants who knew there was some reason PLHIV
needed to disclose status but didn’t know the exact language or consequences; and 3) participants
who didn’t know HIV disclosure was required. The following section will describe these
categories in detail.
Participants Knew the FL HIV Disclosure Law
This group of participants makes up the largest group at 47% or 7 of 15
participants. The community members in this group knew about the law specifically, but either
didn’t care to observe it or found it inappropriate somehow. To this end, one participant noted
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they knew HIV disclosure was a law, but that the law shouldn’t regulate bodies in the
community. They replied, “Like I shouldn't have, with my back surgery, I shouldn't have to be
able to walk up to people and be like, ‘Oh, I've got six pounds of metal in my back.’ That
shouldn't be a law that I have to tell someone” (Participant 6). Another respondent commented
that the law shouldn’t require disclosure and said, “I know it’s illegal, but like I said about
hooking up, it’s none of my business” (Participant 9). Three other participants, however, were
unhappy about the consequences associated with the law. One person said that he knew the law
and asked me what the penalty was. I told him it was a third-degree felony in the state of Florida,
to which he responded, “I don't know if a third-degree felony is something that I agree with, but I
definitely think that you know, I think it's, I think there should be something discussed”
(Participant 12). Another individual mentioned that he knew the law and said, “I did know that I
used to be someone who agreed with it . . . but it's more complex because like we all know, it's
just another loss, punishing gay people for living their lives. For something that's not easy to
prove. You know, how do you prove what you knew [whether you were positive] versus what
you didn't know” (Participant 13)? Another disagreed with the stern consequence for PLHIV not
disclosing their status and mentioned “I mean, we've come so far in this day and age with HIV,
but not everybody gets tested,” (Participant 14) indicating later in the interview that the laws
don’t match the science and what is currently understood about HIV transmission. The next
secondary code discusses the findings for those who knew HIV disclosure was required but was
unsure of the specific FL HIV disclosure laws.
Participants Knew Disclosure Was Required
For this category, 40%, or 6 of the 15 interviewees knew that HIV disclosure was
required prior to intimacy. The respondents in this secondary code recalled there was some type
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of reason a PLHIV had to disclose their status, but they didn’t know the specifics. Most of them
said they heard something about disclosure requirements from a friend or others in the
community. One participant responded,
So, I knew that there was some type of something. I didn't know that there was like a
literal law for Florida. That said, like I don't know the specific law, but I do know from
conversation in the past that there’s like a general knowledge that if you are HIV positive,
you are to disclose that but if you don't disclose that, and then that person finds out later
than I think they can, like, sue you or take you to court. (Participant 10)
This person continues with questioning the validity of the laws once they have confirmed there is
an actual law in the state of Florida. Most comments from those in the study had distinct
reservations about the state creating laws that regulated their bodies and oftentimes found ways
around the laws or didn’t care about them. Participant 10 continues that “if these laws were
created just because of a stigma that the second you have HIV, you're poisoned forever, that’
stupid.” He also poignantly adds, “There are people who want to create laws based on their
imagination. Well, what if this happens and what if this happens, what has happened”
(Participant 10)? This line of thinking was prevalent with the other five participants in this
category as well. Some people didn’t pay attention to the law like the following community
member who commented, “I knew there was something there but not the law or anything. I think
it’s weird, but I don’t really pay attention to it honestly” (Participant 3). In agreement, Participant
11 noted, “I can't force somebody else to disclose anything but ultimately, their answers don't
really matter to me.” Two other people responded that they didn’t think the laws were necessary.
According to one person, “I just don't think there's really any boundaries as long as you're
comfortable, you know, discussing it and it’s no one’s business including the government, so…”
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(Participant 5). Parroting this response, Participant 8 suggests that laws such as these “kind of
ostracizes people with a HIV status.” The last section for this coding group are the small group
interviewees who didn’t know that any type of disclosure was required of PLHIV.
Participants Didn’t Know HIV Disclosure Was Required
This section is the smallest because the least number of community members in
the sample, only 2, or 13%, didn’t have any idea that a HIV disclosure law existed in Florida.
One person didn’t realize it was a law which resulted in the following exchange. He mentioned
that he “did not realize it was illegal” (Participant 7). After some clarification in which I told him
about the law, he retorted with “Someone could be undetectable, but if they know that then it's
illegal? I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair because I just feel like some people may
not know or might not have gone to get tested in a while” (Participant 7). The other person that I
interviewed didn’t know about the law but wasn’t surprised because of the problematic history of
LGBTQ+ persecution. Participant 15 said “I did not know that [the law], but I’m not surprised
because sometimes people like to tell us [in the LGBTQ+ community] what to do.” This
category was still important to point out even though it is the smallest group of people; it still
represents ideas in the community.
The next portion of this chapter presents the most important words to the
community and is a key illustration of how the community talks about and discusses their
processes for selecting a potential intimate partner.
Conclusion
This chapter starts out identifying the words in the LGBTQ+ Central Florida community
members and their importance to the theory of collective mētis. Following these keywords that
represent collective language choice in the community, I discuss the relevance of the language in
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the Florida HIV disclosure law and the unequal punishments that disproportionately affect gay
and bisexual men. This chapter directly addresses the study research questions and shows how
LGBTQ+ community members in Central Florida engage with Florida’s HIV disclosure law and
the way they identify within the community. Next, I present findings from rhetorical collective
agencies which explore the choices within the community in regard to HIV disclosure, including
their lean into preventative medications such as PrEP. This primary code also presents
meaningful data from interview transcripts that taxonomize where the burden of disclosure
should be placed, from PLHIV to disclosure not mattering at all. The second primary code,
translative state, demonstrated that community members chose to represent community interests.
Choosing relied heavily on the modality in which members decided was more important:
individual interests or community ones. The last primary code, trickster-body as community
actant, gave an insight to participants’ knowledge about HIV disclosure law and whether
member knowledge disclosure should matter when selecting a potential intimate partner.
The following chapter discusses the importance and the relationship among the primary,
secondary, and tertiary codes and their relationship to this research study, including how this data
informs and supports collective mētis as an effective tool equipped to help marginalized
communities.
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Chapter Five: Discussion of Findings
“Knowingly transmitting a disease that can kill someone should have
been a crime. At least that's how I viewed it. But it's more complex
because like we all know, it's just another loss, punishing gay people for
living their lives.”
-Participant 13
The goal of this chapter is to provide a discussion of the literature review and how the
findings relate to the theoretical concept of collective mētis. The three characteristics of
collective mētis outlined in Chapter 2 are: rhetorical collective agencies, translative state, and the
trickster-body as community actant. Collective mētis is key to this chapter as it proved to be an
effective theory meant to help marginalized communities. Next, this chapter discusses the
following themes and their significance to the finding presented in Chapter 4:
•
Rhetorical collective agencies showed most community members don’t care about
following Florida HIV disclosure law at all
•
Collective mētis is an effective theoretical tool communities can employ
•
The trickster may operate through the theory of collective mētis in order to help
communities create publics and counterpublics
•
Technological modalities determine ways community members attempt to engage with
potential intimate partners
•
Ethics are an integral part of community engagement; and theory building is a helpful
tool for RHM scholars.
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This chapter ends with a summary of and a preview of the next chapter which includes
conclusions, implications, and future research points for this study.
Rhetorical Agency and Its Importance
Community members simply didn’t care that the law required them to do
something. This choice is the rhetorical agency, or the ways they actively choose to disrupt
hegemonic laws such as disclosure ones. In fact, they actively opposed the disclosure law they
felt was unjust. The ways they chose who needed to disclose their HIV status, whether positive
or negative, is insightful to community members’ rhetorical agency. Jane Bennett (2010) argues
that agency, like power, isn’t distributed equally, and community members in this study not only
agreed with this statement, but actively felt as though the choice of disclosure is a personal and
community choice. One participant put this succinctly when they responded about agency and
the law, “I'm probably correct that there are laws created by straight people who don't understand
the inner workings of the gay community” (Participant 10). Unfortunately, this sentiment was
echoed throughout this study. The LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida that informs this
study does not believe governments should have the authority to regulate their choices. This is
significant because the community viewpoint expands the idea that rhetorical agency
demonstrates the “possibility of action” (Herndl & Licona, 2007, p. 3) and that agency isn’t
owned (Cooper, 2011) but it is distributed throughout the community and the community
members. The community sees fit to better serve its needs through this theory ,and how they
describe their agencies permeates their distrust of laws and the consequences. The rhetorical
agencies in this community takes the notion of conscious enactment a step further, with the
agentive actions of its members belonging to the community and no outside forces, including
laws or policies. This community holds that outsiders shouldn’t have any agentive power within
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the community. The next section connects agency with the choices made in the community and
the importance of collective mētis.
Choices within the Community
To reiterate, as far back as 1970, “The emergence of the problem of the body and its
growing urgency have come about through the unfolding of a political struggle” (Foucault,
1980). To extend and contextualize this quote, Participant 5 said that choices within the
community were up to the members of the community. He comments, “I just don't think there's
really any boundaries as long as you're comfortable, you know, discussing it and it’s no one’s
business including the government, so . . . .” Another interviewee argues that usually questions
about disclosure “aren't even asked” (Participant 4) indicating that the choices in the community
are firmly planted within the agency of the community. The agencies this community selects
determines who enters the translative state and reflects the customs of the community. While
rhetorical collective agencies don’t have to be consciously enacted, in this study, communal
voices respond to the agentive actions of its own members. What certain agencies, or choices, are
used to help the community in forming a public or creating a powerful counterpublic is made
visible by examining the rhetorical collective agencies that aggregate community opinion. These
customs create a trickster that afford community members many choices that wouldn’t otherwise
exist. For example, members describe how they can choose ways to circumvent laws through
medicinal use and preventive measures such as condom use. This is one of the powerful tents of
collective mētis. In other words, considering these ideas and their relationship to communities
are key to how agencies function within collective discursive, and agentive spaces. The next
section discusses how the theory in this study helps empower other marginalized communities
which necessitates a discussion of collective mētis and its relationship to the trickster.
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Collective Mētis: A Successful Community Tool
This section drives home how the theory of collective mētis can be employed as a
successful theoretical community tool that empowers marginalized communities against
oppositional forces. It also argues that a theoretical analytic tool such as collective mētis is
needed for community-based research in RHM. As I discussed in Chapter 2, I built the theory of
collective mētis before collecting data. One thing the data illustrated is that mētis is truly not just
individuated despite the focus by some scholars in rhetorical studies (Detienne and Vernant,
1978; Dolmage, 2009; 2014; 2017; 2020; Hawhee, 2004). In fact, Marcel Detienne and JeanPierre Vernant (1978) trace the plurality of mētis through ancient Greece in various ways, but
don’t attend to how the trickster and mētis are intertwined. They write that according to Oppian,
the first quality of the hunter like the fisherman is “agility, suppleness, swiftness, mobility” (p.
30) and is required for mētis to be effective. A second characteristic, dissimulation, is the “the art
of seeing without being seen” (p. 30) which means that those who use mētis may not always
know they’re actively engaging with the concept. Extending this concept to communities, I argue
that communities also engage in dissimulation collectively. This step is completed by community
members reflecting on and promoting community norms, values, and expectations that become
the way discourse successfully circulates through the community.
The theory described in this dissertation holds up and is therefore an important
contribution to rhetorical studies. Applying this study to the theory is an intentional potential
heuristic for other marginalized communities. This theory can also be applied to communities
that are oppressed by hegemonic publics and laws but isn’t as effective for others who seek to
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oppress.40 Using the visual representation of collective mētis as a theory in Figure 3, I apply the
theory to this research study and describe the process.
The rhetorical agency, or ways that community members chose to select potential
intimate partners combined with their values led them to a specific agentic moment: discussing
issues of disclosure with a potential intimate partner. Members chose to either represent their
own values or the community’s norms, values, and expectations. The difference between these
was made known by distancing those who disagree from community events and access. People
in the community that chose to represent their own values and potential intimate partner choices
still contain metic cunning intelligence, but they don’t move into the community standards. In
this study, community participants who somewhat agree with the community and represent
disclosure choices in the community do not represent community standards.
They don’t become pariahs in the community, but their values and choices don’t align
with community ones. So, they don’t enter the translative state. Those who choose to represent
community standards and values enter through the translative state, according to Latour (1999).
Figure 3 illustrates this translative state by a dotted border because translation is a fluid process
whereby people can move in and out of individual and collective agencies. After the translative
state, the community agreed on conventions of discourse around disclosure and that became
community custom. However, Florida HIV disclosure laws constitute an oppositional force to the
community as laws require people in the community disclose HIV status prior to intimate partner
selection. This push against community values begins building collective mētis which
operationalizes the community and empowers a trickster-body that protects the community and
its members. This trickster increases in rhetorical efficacy until it has outmaneuvered
40
This is covered in detail in the next chapter.
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(represented by a bigger box in Figure 3) the law. This trickster in this study then creates a
counterpublic which oscillates some parts of the publics41, or disclosure law that is required;
however, the counterpublic itself is imbued with collective mētis that represents community
communication. The community counterpublic creates space for community members to discuss
disclosure their way.
Figure 3. A visual representation of the theory of collective mētis
41
Reminder that publics and counterpublics aren’t separate theories inasmuch as there is an oscillation between
publics power and the power counterpublics exude.
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Following, a visual and description of speaking about intimate partner communication is
explored as the community agreed.
Ways of Speaking about Intimate Partner Communication
The repetition of common words throughout all interviews point to additional
evidence that collective mētis does empower marginalized communities and their discursive
formations. In order to better represent the words repeated throughout all interviews, I created a
word cloud which is presented in Figure 4 below. The figure contains aggregated common words
throughout the interviews. Following, I explain the relevance of the words.
Figure 4. Word cloud of most words used by participants
The importance of the words listed above are keyed to how community members discuss their
experiences in the community and how they interact with the HIV disclosure law. The fact that
words such as “status” and “community” were repeated so often is telling of how the community
discusses issues of HIV disclosure and offers additional evidence that the ways people talk about
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potential intimate partner selection and the law is generated throughout the whole community.
Certain words point to little worry for the community in their discussions of intimate partner
selection. For example, the words “honest” and “consent” are very small which represent that
people typically discussed ways around the law. These words highlight the importance of the
collective mētis and the trickster as the words that matter most to the community.
The next section discusses how language and the theory of collective mētis help
communities through developing the trickster-body.
Even Identifying the Trickster is Tricky
The trickster is an important characteristic of collective mētis because they both require
community involvement and are meant to help marginalized communities. The translative state
Latour (1999) argues is key to how people in the community “trick” HIV disclosure laws. The
following discusses how community members in “precarious environments” (Brouwer, 2055)
contain “metises,” or the “high degree of mētis” (Scott, 1998). This dissertation adds to these
studies as a way to examine how marginalized communities enact the trickster as a community
participant, especially as a force meant to circumvent the law. The concept also suggests that
rhetorical collective agencies and translative state are related to situations they respond to, but
with the trickster, all of the characteristics of collective mētis may not be as prominent contingent
on the situation, or oppositional force, the community faces. The trickster-body, then, is a
creation of community interaction and results in the community positing as a public,
counterpublic, or a mix of both. As the section title suggests, the elusive nature of the trickster
can be difficult to identify, particularly if someone is not a community member. Tricksters are
tricky by design. The whole point of communities employing the trickster is to evade and
outsmart oppositional forces. It stands to reason the publics and counterpublics created by the
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trickster are difficult to pinpoint, but are imperative to community success, as the next section
discusses.
Trickster Creating Publics and Counterpublics
Community counterpublic enclave don’t care what laws are required. Determining
publics and counterpublics are conducive for empowering communities is enacted by the
cunning nature of tricksters and their socially constructed power. Tricksters redefine the
boundaries of both publics and counterpublics and make themselves known in various ways that
benefit the communities in which they operate. Often, tricksters are not identifiable by those
outside of the community. Attempts to regulate public and counterpublic spaces aren't as
effective without the trickster and the trickster’s imbued collective mētis. For example, the
trickster allows a community operating as a counterpublic to homogenize their intimate partner
communication that tricks the law into thinking their practices aren’t illegal.
Michael Warner (2002) argues that publics are not informed by community strangers,
rather people have to engage in discourse in order to form a public. While I partially agree that a
public is mainly the product of those participating in the community, this ignores the relationship
of collective mētis and the trickster. Their aim is to use cunning intelligence to shift and
manipulate different spaces of power to attain community-related goals. Creating the trickster
allows the community to represent publics and counterpublics positions that are most important
to their community while remaining in a safe counterpublic enclave (Chávez, 2011). In this way,
the counterpublics created by the trickster operationalize the community and empower a
trickster-body that outmaneuvers requirements from the HIV disclosure law. Extending the
relationship of counterpublics and power, Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer (2001) claim that
counterpublics groups were historically excluded from the dominant modes of discourse and
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power. The trickster in collective mētis creates counterpublic spaces for communities that reflect
their community norms, values, and expectations despite HIV disclosure laws. The trickster is an
effective way to think about how communities negotiate complex situations through communitybased tactics. This concept, which is based on the work of Michel de Certeau (1984) and the
notion that tactics and strategy are modes of special action. He argues that dominant and resistant
cultural intersections require communities to respond to situations contextually. Arguably,
though, the trickster is always and already responding through publics (dominant) and
counterpublics (resistant) cultural intersections. Crossing through these publics and
counterpublics allows the trickster to negotiate on behalf of the community. These tactics and
strategies do not, then, require active observations by community members; instead, collective
mētis allows the trickster to create, manipulate, and blur complex situational boundaries in order
to help their respective community through discursive strategies. Ryan Mitchell (2021), in his
examination of the visceral imagination, describes how publics and counterpublic theory can be
helpful, particularly for marginalized communities such as queer ones. He argues that for
“groups already deemed deviant, controversy, especially medical controversy, poses a serious
risk of shoring up marginalization” (p. 30) especially in relation to queerness and the
pathologizing of queerness. The visceral imagination connects directly to the trickster as
tricksters emerge from translative cunning to publics and counterpublics as proxy for community
standards regardless of outside expectations. In this way, it doesn’t matter what the laws require
as long as the community is safely tucked within its community counterpublic enclave.
This was also the case for community members when realizing their own medical
practices in their community outside of the law and its relationship to the trickster. Participant 10
remarks, “I am an advocate. I make the argument that you're actually safer with an HIV positive
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person who is taking their medication regularly than you are hooking up with somebody who got
tested three months ago.” Comments like these were repeated throughout the study and are
important for the concept of creating a community trickster. Community norms, values, and
expectations justify comments such as these because these comments create the trickster’s public
and counterpublic. For example, community members follow medicinal procedures they find
important such as taking medication if they are HIV positive; however, HIV disclosure laws are
circumvented by the community saying, “Hey, we’re doing what we want and we’re safe within
our own practices.” The importance of these types of comments are evident in embodied RHM
research (Melonçon, 2018) because the comments allow the community to oscillate between
publics they agree with and create counterpublics when they don’t. An example of the trickster
that works to this point is PrEP, or Pre-exposure prophylaxis, a preventative medication that
highly limits the amount of risk negative persons have when engaging in risky unprotected sex.
The most popular form of PrEP is a pill called Truvada, although there are similar PrEP
medications on the market. The CDC (2022a) notes that PrEP significantly reduces the risk
associated with contracting HIV if the user of a PrEP medication takes the medicine daily
without missing doses. In short, this method also prevents the user from contracting HIV even if
the opposing intimate partner is positive and unmedicated (or detectable). In some states like
Florida, however, lawmakers often don’t take into account scientific research and explanations of
exposure risks, and the community is well aware of this. Participants were quick to argue they
circumvent disclosure laws through the use of HIV medication. Broken up into two types of
medicinal uses, preventative and antiretroviral, the following section discusses the trickster’s role
in circumventing disclosure laws through medications.
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Trickster as Preventative HIV Medications
This section discusses how the trickster, through collective mētis, allows for community
members to not only dismiss legal requirements, but to intentionally move against them. Located
within publics and counterpublics, the trickster has an interesting way of helping people in the
community find ways around HIV disclosure law. People in my study interviews actively
discussed that PrEP is one reason they didn’t care about HIV disclosure. While some participants
did care about disclosure, it wasn’t for the reasons the law requires. PrEP is a pill taken to help
prevent contracting HIV. According to the CDC (2022a), PrEP is highly effective for preventing
HIV when taken as prescribed and can reduce the risk of contracting “HIV from sex by about
99%” (CDC, 2022a). The trickster empowers members to say things like, “You know, it [PrEP]
used to be kind of a negative but now it is like . . . I mean, maybe it's a positive. Maybe positive
in a way that can’t be described,” who then commented about someone on PrEP, “Oh, I feel like
they're with the program and educated about it” (Participant 2). The takeaway in this section is
that the trickster allows those in the community to effectively argue that if someone is on PrEP,
that person doesn’t care if a potential intimate partner is HIV positive because the CDC claims
nearly zero possibility of infection. The trickster oscillates between the public, or the notion that
people should follow rules for the sake of public health (Foucault, 1973) and the counterpublic
that argues people should be able to choose their own intimate partners regardless of their status.
The trickster also appears as another preventative medicine which is newer than PrEP but
has the same trickster effects in the community. Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), is similar to
PrEP in its effectiveness. PEP is an “antiretroviral drug” taken “after a single high-risk event to
stop HIV seroconversion” (CDC, 2022e). Members in the community echoed similar beliefs in
the effectiveness of PEP as they did PrEP and even said that “medicine has come a long way”
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(Participant 3) so they are comfortable looking for a potential intimate partner even if they have
unprotected sex with a partner and they are not on PrEP themselves.
Another way collective mētis allows the trickster to move against disclosure law is
through antiretroviral therapy (ART) which is a medicine that suppresses the virus eventually
rendering it undetectable (CDC, 2022f). It doesn’t matter to the community member taking PrEP
if a potential intimate partner is HIV positive as long as the PLHIV is medicated. The trickster
facilitates these conversations because it is born out of the norms, values, and expectations the
community has adopted for its members. Yet another way the trickster manifests through legal
and community boundaries is to create counterpublics for members who are HIV positive.
Creating a counterpublic for these members, the trickster assists the community by allowing
community members to argue that the public and those in power have no discoursal power. The
same is true of the laws that attempt to regulate their potential intimate partner selections. Thus, a
counterpublic that serves PLHIV needs is better suited when selecting a partner who is PLHIV
and honest about their status. Participant 11 said, “If somebody knows their HIV status and says
they're positive and that person is willing to disclose their status, they're probably on medications
to reduce their copies within their blood. So, they're basically 100% safe to have sex with
because they know their status.” This is an example of how the trickster reflects community
norms, values, and expectations around potential intimate partner communication.
Another way the trickster empowers the community is through the relationship of
publics, or heteronormative relationships. In this way, the trickster creates a sense of PHIV as
appropriate for the counterpublic which includes those outside of the heteronormative purview
such as consensual intimate relationship between PLHIV in this community. Viewing
relationships through a publics lens, one interviewee went so far as to comment that “Gays have
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seen dysfunctional relationships because we've seen toxic straight relationships, where
heteronormative values and heteronormative culture just stick together, whether it sucks or not”
and added, “So the person who is HIV positive I'm more likely to be 100% comfortable having
unprotected sex with than the person who doesn't know their status” (Participant 13). In these
clear examples of the trickster representing community values, collective mētis is the tool that
examines marginalized community practices such as those mentioned here. The trickster,
however, does not always appear as an archetype that helps every community the same way.
This is another strength of the trickster because the amorphous nature of it allows it to shift to
helping various communities in multiple contexts.
One Size Trickster Does Not Fit All
Simply put, no one community is exactly the same, and this is true for the trickster. The
nebulous nature of the trickster functions as a benefit for marginalized communities because it
enables the trickster to form stronger collective identities and then use these collective identities
in both publics and counterpublics. Because the trickster is created specific to the community in
which it serves a purpose to help the community, all tricksters are reliant on the varied
community norms, values, and expectations that create them. This is also true for queer
communities such as the one that is the focus of this study. While some communities may agree
on some national issues through grassroots measures, local contexts and positionality are key to
understanding and working with specific marginalized communities. While communities are
typically not informed by complete strangers as Warner (2002) argues, they do create their own
discoursal rules which vary from community to community. To extend this idea further, the
trickster changes according to what communities need and how they need a trickster to operate.
Since communities, publics, and counterpublics change from one space to another, marginalized
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communities are not an exception. The trickster that one marginalized community may need
doesn’t automatically translate into another. For example, this dissertation explored a LGBTQ+
community in Central Florida, but the way this marginalized community operates is likely very
different than one in Seattle or even another one in Florida. I’m not arguing that communities
don’t contain some element of a trickster that comes from an oppositional force in collective
mētis theory; rather, I posit that what the trickster does and how it helps are contingent on the
needs of a specific community. One major contribution collective mētis and the creation of the
trickster has made to rhetorical studies is the helpful nature of the trickster; however, it would be
remiss to assume that all tricksters created by all communities are generally helpful. Following,
the next section explores this caveat and its relationship to collective mētis.
Negative Trickster Power Potential: A Cautionary Tale
There are limits to this theory, and for a discussion of the cautions of the trickster, I
return to the idea that the trickster as a “situation-inverter” (Hynes & Doty, 1993, p. 37) isn’t
always employed to help communities in responsible and ethical ways. Since the trickster allows
community members through collective mētis to usurp laws, a disturbing side of the trickster also
exists and extends Hynes and Doty’s notion of what the trickster can and cannot do. In other
words, the trickster can be a powerful force to help empower and engage marginalized
communities in fighting against hegemonic forces that attempt to regulate and control their
actions without regard for the consequences; however, by its very designation, the trickster
figure can also be employed in nefarious communities that intend to cause social turmoil. While
the trickster figure is often seen in a negative connotation, this dissertation challenges assumed
binaries of the trickster. Stepping outside of archetypal trickster42 ideas might be difficult for
42
The trickster is defined in detail in Chapter 2: Literature Review and a discussion of it specific limits that came
out of this study can be read in Chapter 6: Implications and Conclusions
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some, but this research connects the trickster to community-based research and theory building.
Ultimately, the trickster is an important part of collective mētis because considering
communities’ rhetorical collective agencies and the translative state allows the trickster to create
spaces for communities to exist outside power structures. This is not always a good thing if the
aims of certain communities are to cause harm or imbricate bigotry towards other groups. The
following section takes up this idea and discusses the negative effects the trickster is capable of
when employed for iniquitous purposes.
A Dangerous and Hegemonic Trickster
The trickster in collective mētis empowers communities against oppositional forces, but
not all counterpublics are ethically viable. Erec Smith (2014; 2020) and his discussion of the
trickster mentions that the trickster figure doesn’t always exude a positive influence in and
against other communities. In his dissertation, Smith (2014) argues that the trickster can exclude
people and even intentionally target others such as racists. Extending his argument further, I hold
that the trickster can not only exclude certain people and communities but reflects the values of
the community and its members. Thus, if a group is dangerous and its goals are aligned against
equity, diversity, and inclusion, the trickster created from community customs can consciously or
unconsciously be enacted for unethical and harmful purposes.
I point to a clear example of the negative potential of the trickster in action: The Proud
Boys. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)43 (2023a), a group that is “a catalyst for racial
justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white
supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people”
(n.p.). The SPLC has listed the Proud Boys group as a white nationalist (which means white
43
The SPLC is an interdisciplinary professional non-profit organization committed to promoting social justice.
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supremacist and racist) group and claims they are dangerous because they disenfranchise and
violently target men who are non-white, gender-varied, and homosexual. The amount of hatred
and violence from this group is certainly not part of the public in the United States, so in some
ways they are a counterpublic since they are seen nationally as a fringe group; however, they
also employ some of the same moves from the trickster that the dissertation study sample did-just in hegemonic and dangerous ways. For example, Gavin McInnes, the founder of the group,
writes that the male group is for (no women are allowed), “Western chauvinists who refuse to
apologize for creating the modern world” and “long for the days when girls were girls and men
were men” (SPLC, 2023b, n.p.). Proud Boys claim, however, that they are meant to empower
those with traditional values and that current culture “is like being a crippled, black, lesbian
communist in 1953” (n.p.). In other words, they claim to be proud of their culture, but not
radical. Based on the short text here, it’s clear this is not the case. This group attempts to employ
a collective mētis trickster to mince words with action in order to appear non-violent.44
Unfortunately, The Proud Boys community, although thankfully small, uses a sense of the
trickster to attempt to circumvent laws that require them to remain orderly and abandon violence
against other communities they feel are oppositional forces to theirs.
The main goal of this section has been to drive home that negative potential of the
trickster exists and should not be ignored. Thinking through how trickster-body research can be
moved forward is taken up in the next chapter, but I wanted to demonstrate that the trickster isn’t
always the champion of all communities.
44
I don’t have space in this dissertation to really dig into this issue, but I’m including enough information to valid
the point. Just google The Proud Boys to read more about the hate designation and ridiculously racist antics.
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The next section describes the technological modalities and its relationship to collective
mētis and the translative state that varied why community members chose to respond in the
modalities they did.
Technological Modalities Shape Community Participation
The translative state (Latour, 1999) has an effect on the way that community members
engage with potential intimate partners. While not surprising considering technological
modalities are connected to discourse and language (Goodrich, 2022), this dissertation shows
that it’s more complicated than just arguing for discoursal connections. I was surprised that many
of the community members still preferred to meet face to face or a mix of the modalities when
selecting a potential intimate partner. The nature of collective mētis allows for variations in
agency and represents norms, values, and expectations for the community as a whole.
Technological modalities aren’t only connected to singular discourse; in fact, this dissertation
promises different ways of thinking about how participants engaged in ways that shaped their
interactions with the communities and their potential intimate partner. There were three areas
worth discussing in relation to collective mētis and potential intimate partner selection: concerns
for safety; long- or short-term relationship goals; and disclosure and modality selection.
Safety Concerns Alter Modalities
This section discusses a surprising finding: participants did not want to meet potential
intimate partners online if they hadn’t met them in person before. This is worth discussing as
many participants expressed a clear and collective fear of their own safety, which is not entirely
surprising given the vulnerable nature of the community; however, this contribution extends
“technoscience as a shifting ensemble of heterogeneous cultural practices rather than a discrete,
coherent enterprise” (Scott, 2003, p. 229). Interestingly, community members were not interested
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in meeting exclusively online because they were worried about their safety. This comment was
mentioned several times by multiple people, so it indicates the community reflects this cultural
and technological practice. Collective mētis not only underscores this idea but promotes that it
may be more complicated when considering community agentic measures in RHM. The next
section discusses how participants and their relationship goals informed their modality selection.
Relationship Goals Determine Modality
One aspect I didn’t anticipate in this study was the relationship between what community
members were looking for in a potential intimate partner and how they chose to engage with
those in the community. For example, Participant 9, when looking for a short-term intimate
engagement said that they “pretty much just get in there and get out.” This means they don’t
really take the time to enact collective mētis to help them figure out the best modality for their
interaction. Instead, they engage in their own individual agentic moment when using the online
modalities or apps in order to satisfy their immediate needs. Others in the community echoed this
notion and argued that it was their own choice whether they engage with someone short- or longterm. The main important difference is that people who were looking for a long-term intimate
partner tended to meet exclusively face-to-face (F2F) so they could assess the situation and ways
the potential partner interacted with their surroundings. When it came to HIV disclosure, these
modalities often determined the agentic moment a person would make: whether to represent their
own values in a potentially intimate situation or representing the community and its goals
through their actions. This was true of those who chose to operate in both modalities.
HIV Disclosure Overlaps in Modalities
Discussing how study participants and HIV disclosure complicates the idea of
technological modalities and their usefulness is an important finding. The title of the section is
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apt because participants’ preferred modalities when selecting a potential intimate partner
determined how they thought about HIV disclosure. Many times, the online applications often
buried the need to disclose anything other than what the person using the application wanted to
showcase. For example, if a community member chose to represent the community at the agentic
moment, they are still representing the values of the community because it is common practice in
this particular community to skip HIV disclosure conversations. Instead, all community members
pointed to the physical characteristics of choosing a potential intimate partner as the reason to
even look at the profile. The importance here is that disclosure is buried in the profile for a
number of reasons: there is more pertinent information the person is looking for; the application
allows for people to lie about their HIV status; and the application doesn’t require users to fill in
the disclosure portion of the profile. Connecting the overlaps in modalities, I move into how
community members mentioned they were worried about disclosure laws and how they might
affect the communities in which they’re a part of.
Ethics and Community Engagement
Community members were weary of the laws and resulting ethical implications.
Participant 14 commented that the community is “a sex positive environment,” which is great for
the community members who are part of the community; however, this participant continues by
saying, “So there's no shame in anything that happens unlike laws.” This statement caught my
attention as I thought about the ethical implications of laws on the community. Thinking of laws
as positivist or inflexible was a common theme, but mirrored community concern for resulting
laws that may come out of the values of Florida legislation that don’t agree with them. Afterall ,
laws do have rhetorical interpretations (Soboleva, 2022), so it’s not unusual for community
members to be worried about the ethical dimensions of these laws. Since laws tend to regard
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public health and the biocitizen as one and the same, members of marginalized communities
such as this one were worried about the effects of laws. Often, community members felt that “I
just think that there's definitely a larger microscope on us with laws like these,” (Participant 3)
which demonstrate the dangerous ethical considerations of laws such as these and their potential.
To this point exactly, Participant 5 recalled someone they knew who faced legal challenges from
a previous relationship in which someone didn’t disclose their status. They remarked, “You
know, I do know people who have been put in situations like that and you know, I always say it's
almost like, I feel like you need to be out you know, you always need to be on your game.
(Participant 5). In other words, community members are aware of the impact these laws have on
their community and potential intimate partner selection. For those who didn’t explicitly mention
ethics of the law, they did consider what the ramifications were for not obeying laws. Although
not agreeing to abide by these laws, community members wanted to know “what the penalty is
for it [non disclosure] (Participant 12)? Clearly, the ethical attunement of the community
validates ethical concerns of laws such as these such as more laws that might sidestep ethical
considerations and bulldoze the community with more egregious laws.
Next, I consider theory building and its use in community-based research projects
in RHM.
Theory Building as a Research Tool in RHM
The theoretical framework of collective mētis that I’m building in this dissertation leads
to my contribution in rhetorical studies. The trickster-body is a potentially helpful analytic tool
that empowers communities against oppressive forces and develops a trickster that continually
oscillates between publics and counterpublics to help the community despite societal standing.
Researching and writing about theory building in RHM suggests that building new theory is key
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to moving RHM research forward (Melonçon & Scott, 2018). This dissertation builds on how
communities, community members, and theory become practice (Kessler, 2020). In other words,
the concept of collective mētis isn’t solely an academic concept, but one that is meant to be
enacted and applied to various academic and community contexts. My research adds to theory
building as “contextualized” (Scott & Gouge, 2019) in RHM because not all of the
characteristics of collective mētis will function in the same ways in the same communities.
Considering the differences that various marginalized communities need, collective mētis can
help marginalized communities in the ways that are most beneficial for them. The rhetorical
power of collective mētis and its help in community contexts, particularly in medical spaces,
allows for the community to benefit from pre-existing laws too. An example is the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which allows a certain level of privacy
afforded to community members (United States Department of Health & Human Services, 2023).
Connecting this law with the trickster can help marginalized communities in medical contexts
invoke ways of not disclosing any medical information. This type of privacy helps create pockets
in communities where this theory can amalgamate community agencies with community norms,
values, and expectations. Engaging collective mētis in this process can truly assist communities
in finding ways of usurping oppositional forces that intend to regulate their bodies. Considering
these critical modes of inquiry is meant to not only predict that something in communities might
happen; instead, theories such as collective mētis helps advance RHM scholarship by making the
theory to practice explicit and replicable in other contexts. For example, this study argues that
while HIV disclosure compliance is part of the legal requirements in Florida, “evaluating the
outcomes of these policies then become part of the science of public health, science which, in
turn, affects policy” (Hite & Carter, 2019). The theory of collective mētis contributes to the
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intersections of theory building in RHM, community-based research, and policy. Collective mētis
encourages researchers to work in communities so theory and community communication
practices are built together in ways that are most advantageous for the community. This is true
especially considering who or what “comprises ‘the public’” (Malkowski & Melonçon, 2019) in
marginalized communities.
As this theory illustrates and the previous section alludes to, collective mētis isn’t
separate from collectivity, but is an integral part of it. Collective mētis captures an innovative
approach for researchers in RHM communities. The theory built in this dissertation is especially
helpful for those RHM researchers working within the communities and helping build
counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) that help communities resist oppressive forces such as
controlling and discriminatory laws. Collective mētis isn’t limited to only marginalized
communities, though, but the empowered trickster is most effective in this space because it
allows marginalized communities to challenge laws such as HIV disclosure law through
collective agency potential and the trickster that pushes against medicalization or using the field
of medicine to control bodies. Interestingly, the ways that communities engage with the concept
of collective mētis vary by the type of modality participants chose to engage in. The significance
is important for rhetorical studies as technologies continue to mediate the ways that people
engage with one another, and communities are no expectation.
Conclusion
This chapter made several moves worth summarizing. Rhetorical agency is
important in community-based research as determining the ways communities choose their
discursive practices is imperative to attaining community goals. This chapter demonstrated that
collective mētis is a viable community analytic tool that can assist communities fight against
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oppressive forces. The trickster creates spaces for publics and counterpublics that align with
community members’ ideas, values, and expectations although they run perpendicular to HIV
disclosure requirements. Community members don’t care, though. In fact, they not only argue
the laws are ineffective, but actively find ways to move against disclosure laws. The trickster is
key to this community work, but also changes based on varied communities. One trickster-body
is not a solution for every community, but necessitates the reflection of community norms,
values, and expectations of the community in which it operates. Sometimes, though, the
community might not have altruistic goals. Paying attention to the goals of the community and
its aims, if not ameliorative, could create a trickster that intends harm. Technological modalities
are shaped on the translative state and community member agentic moment selections.
Community members were worried about the ethical dimensions of laws and how they affect
themselves. Lastly, this chapter demonstrated that theory building is an effective and productive
research tool for community-based research in RHM. I would like to clearly note that this
chapter continues to “make connections across a range of rhetorical theories” (Scott &
Melonçon, 2019) and adds a new framework that will contribute to RHM and its inventional
practices.
The next chapter discusses the implications of these discussions such as researcher
positionality, ethics, and theory building. It includes areas for future research and concludes this
research study with personal remarks.
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Chapter Six: Implications and Conclusions
Someone didn't mention they were HIV positive? It's not a great thing but it's like,
yeah, people do stupid shit all the time. They didn't inflict anyone with a death
sentence, so really, if lawmakers are that concerned with someone's health, health
care would be free.
-Participant 13
This dissertation has explored how the theory of collective mētis can empower
marginalized communities and is based on a LGBTQ+ community in Central Florida. Enacting
collective mētis in this community demonstrates why Florida HIV disclosure laws should not be
required when selecting a potential intimate partner. Regardless of the law, community members
find to circumvent and move against laws such as these. This study is situated within the
rhetorical of health and medicine (RHM) scholarly community. The three characteristics that
make up the theory of collective mētis are: 1) rhetorical collective agencies; 2) translative state;
and 3) the trickster-body as community actant. The following research questions guided this
research study:
● How do people in counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) communicate their potential
intimate partner desires to others in the community?
○ What types of disclosures do they express and negotiate, and how?
● How do the dynamics of potential intimate partner selection (online or in person) affect
one another and in what ways?
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● Starting from the premise that disclosure is communicated in various ways, how does this
community employ individual and collective rhetorical and discursive practices that
disrupt the medicalization and policing of their HIV disclosure practices?
○ Particularly in how disclosure laws are circumvented?
● To what extent are folks in the community aware of the collective agentive power of
language practices within the community?
Following a literature review that built collective mētis, my methodology included a textual
analysis of the Florida HIV disclosure laws and conducted 15 interviews with community
members. Using a thematic coding process and the main characteristics that comprise collective
mētis, I analyzed interview transcripts in tandem with the HIV disclosure law language. I found
that community members actively use the trickster figure to fight against HIV disclosure laws by
finding ways to communicate with potential intimate partners outside of disclosure requirements.
Community members have no intention of adhering to the HIV disclosure law as they find it
punitive, unethical, and misguided as the quote at the start of this chapter implies.
The rest of this chapter will discuss the implications of this research including
those for RHM and ethics, future research areas that include comparative state laws and
researcher positionality. After discussing the potential of collective mētis in other contexts, this
chapter concludes by wrapping up my journey in finding mētis.
Implications of this Dissertation
This section is meant to answer the “so what?” question. In other words, this
research is important because it contributes to rhetorical studies and the rhetoric of health and
medicine. Broadly conceived, this study argues that building rhetorical theories can assist
marginalized communities and rhetorical studies by exploring the relationship between them and
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laws. The significance of this research is applicable in community contexts that desire to better
understand community norms, values, and expectations. Specifically, this dissertation discusses
specific implications of this study and examines researcher implications for RHM, ethics and
community research methodologies and the potential of theory building as a rhetorically critical
practice. The next section argues for the importance of methodological approaches for
community-based research in RHM.
Researcher Implications for RHM
The methodological approaches of researchers in RHM have been thoroughly discussed
in recent years (see Scott & Melonçon, 2018). My study contributes to methodological
approaches and researcher positionalities by arguing both should be made clear for effective
research design. While this claim may seem apparent, too often researchers in RHM don’t
explicitly state the relationship between their methodological approaches and its connection to
their own positionality as both a community member and researcher. After all, working in situ
(Endres et al., 2016) with communities requires clear and direct juxtaposition of these research
elements; without them, research studies only hint at effective community-based research. RHM
scholars should explore how the relationship of methodologies and positionality contribute to
their understanding of the research they conduct in the communities they work/are a part of.
A clear example of this implication is the relationship of myself to the LGBTQ+
community I work with throughout this study. Leaning into my knowledge of the community, I
asked members what issues mattered to them, and they mentioned that laws still stigmatize them.
Without clearly defining my role and positionality in this community, the ways HIV disclosure
laws and resulting stigmas affected the community would have been hidden. The hidden
quotidian becomes clearer when I am able to talk with folx in the community who know my aim
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is to help the community in which I’m a part of. This is a reason why this dissertation only
includes interviews and statues as rhetorical textual analysis. Most of the conversations leading
up to this study were backchannel and informal. In other words, my positionality as a community
member allowed me access to spaces and conversations that I wouldn’t have been privy to if I
were coming in solely as a researcher. Largely, the everyday utterances and actions by the
community I’m a part of inspired this research. For this reason, I hold that researcher
positionality needs to be explicitly mentioned from the outset of a research study and articulated
with the community. This is a clear implication for the field and for research with communities
because it allows the community to help with the research in an informal way that highlights
community goals. Even though the location of this study had to expand, the resulting data can
help communities and RHM researchers when designing community-based research and
methodologies. Another implication related to research methodologies is the ethical component
of RHM research. The following section talks through these ideas in more detail.
Ethics and Community Research Methodologies
One of the goals of RHM is to encourage ameliorative strategies and discussions
for communities and community members. A way that RHM engages this work is through
examining and analyzing ethical implications research. The following sections discuss the ethical
implications and community research methodologies in more detail as they relate to my research
and include implications for other RHM researchers.
Ethical Implications
The ethical implications of this study are related to research methodologies in
RHM. While I couldn't discuss some of the issues surrounding the community because I didn’t
want to share all of the community’s hidden discourses, knowing how to communicate in ways
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the community valued as ethical helped with data analysis. As someone familiar with the issues
the community faced, I was able to help them in the ways they wanted without violating their
trust or accidentally “outing” a member. The ethical implication in this dissertation is tricky
because I wanted to ensure participants’ confidentiality while also helping the community voice
their concerns of oppressive HIV disclosure laws.
A clear ethical implication of this dissertation came out of the interviews and
resulting data. To put it succinctly: queer communities take care of its members. Why is this an
ethical implication? It is important because I would not have been able to recruit participants for
this study without my membership in the community. The ethical dimension is created by the
communities and enacted in ways that mean to protect its members. The trickster is one way
these community citizen-scholars (Ackerman & Coogan, 2013) can move in and out of publics
and counterpublics that best suit their needs. Another ethical dimension that arises is a direct and
clear explanation of situational ethics in community-based work.
I should note that while this study is not located within indigenous studies, there are a
handful of really important sources included in this section that speak to the ethical implications
of community-based work. Although the research on indigenous research practices has really
been conceptualized in the past 10 years or so including, but not limited to, accountability of
researcher responsibilities in community-led work (Wilson, 2008) and responsible research
practices (Chilisa, 2012), the fact that several books have been published over this relatively
short amount of time strongly suggests that considering risks within community-based work is a
trend in rhetorical studies. For an example of how community-based research can limit its
intended effects, I turn to recent scholarship within indigenous community-based studies. A
pertinent case study comes from Linda Tuhiwai-Smith’s (2021) book, Decolonizing
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Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, which examines decolonizing research
studies for indigenous people. In her text, she discusses the ways that oftentimes “negation” (p.
71), or the ramifications of colonialism and imperialism, shape how indigenous people respond
to the work that others attempt to conduct in indigenous communities without considering how
the imperialist nature of words such as history, writing, and theory compound consequences of
colonist attitudes in community-based methods. This is an important point as not understanding
the methodological approaches a researcher takes can be harmful (Torrez, 2015; Tuck & Yang,
2014). This project clearly demonstrates that a clear researcher positionality and an ethics
statement are required for a successful and productive community research project; without
these, it is not community research. This is true for community research methodologies too
because their creation is imperative to ethical RHM community-based research.
Community Research Methodologies
This section is related to the ethical implications listed above but is its own section
because I wanted to clearly and definitively point out the connection to ethical community
research and the methodologies that inform these approaches. Examining the productive value of
collective mētis exhibited in this research, I hold that community methodologies must be created
from the whole community and not just part of it. This dissertation aimed to promote an “ethical
praxis that considers the generative power of a specific situation” (Melonçon, Molloy, & Scott,
2020). In other words, this research project adds to community methodologies located at the
intersection of RHM studies and community-based activism and is a mutable methodology
which Scott and Melonçon (2018) define as, “A willingness and even obligation to pragmatically
and ethically adjust aspects of methodology to changing exigencies, conditions, and
relationships” (p. 5). My research study is specific and informs the local context in the LBTQ+
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community the research took place. Community members helped create the study and also
supported the completion of the project. Without their clear methodological help, even
informally, this project would not have succeeded. Moving forward, research methodologies
must adjust throughout the research process to reflect the iterative and messy process of research.
A genuine community-based methodology built by the community and with the community
instead of at the community is apparent in the results. One goal of this dissertation was to
provide a space for disenfranchised and marginalized communities to empower themselves
against oppression; this could not have been accomplished without community input. Related to
implications of ethics and methodologies, community members can also attune RHM researchers
to their needs. Then, researchers should practice theory building and its relationship to
communities as a way to help marginalized community members, which the next section
elaborates.
Theory Building as a Creative and Effective Tool
Judy Segal (2005) writes, “Rhetoric is useful as a means of studying health and medicine
as a discourse-in-use” (p. 154) because of its attention to language. This quote offers a powerful
way to think about collective mētis, community discourse, and RHM community-based research.
As a recent example, Molly Margaret Kessler (2020) examines the Cartesian duality between the
mind and body by exploring binaries and the new materialism through two case studies of
autoimmune patients. She argues that RHM researchers have a better chance of avoiding binary
dualities if researchers shift from “treating language as representational to positioning
representational practices among many practices (including but not limited to discursive
practices)” (p. 87). My research moves this idea forward and implies that community case
studies can examine and address positionality in communities and build theory collectively. As
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an example of this claim, Nathan Johnson (2018) notes that studies such as these offer
“anticipation of audience needs” (p. 65). His work helps me consider that theory building can’t
anticipate needs of the community without creating the study and theory in tandem. Rebecca A.
Kuehl, Sara A. Mehltretter-Drury, and Jenn Anderson (2020) conceptualize rhetoric through a
health activist rhetorical framework and worked with community members to model that theory
building can be activist work.
My research echoes this call, and I suggest RHM researchers continue to consider the
rhetorical and activist power of creating theory with our membership in communities. Doing so
demonstrates that theory building can be both helpful and fruitful when considering communitybased research, particularly in RHM. Theory building is helpful, but more examples are needed
in order to continually help marginalized communities such as the one in this dissertation.
Creating additional or exploring the nuances of theories such as collective mētis will continue to
advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion for marginalized communities. These points
noted, the following sections will explore how this research can be extended in future projects
and contexts.
Future Research
The following sections exemplify how this research can move community-based
research in RHM forward by suggesting ways to extend the research presented here. First, a case
study of other state HIV disclosure laws and their impact on the health and medicalization of
local marginalized communities can shed light into the power dynamics between them. This
future research would be helpful in determining how perspectives of community members
intersect with the laws. Next, reviewing the mitigating negative effects of the trickster is
discussed followed by plans to critically examine researcher positionality. The last two sections
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argue for a comprehensive examination of collective mētis in myriad contexts and future
research around modalities and the effects they have when selecting potential intimate partners.
Comparison of HIV Disclosure Laws by State
One area where this research could be extended is comparing state laws and HIV
disclosure laws that affect local communities. This would be a helpful future project as the
language in the laws are not identical, and neither are the communities. A research study such as
this would expand knowledge for both researchers and community members. Since laws are
technical documents that require people to follow them, a future study could analyze how
marginalized communities such as the one presented in this dissertation do or don’t follow these
laws. Additionally, examining how some communities actively fight against oppressive laws
such as HIV disclosure laws would be a rich site for research and rhetorical theory.
Another potential way to extend this research is to view the future of health policy and
community research in RHM. A way to get at this research point is to examine laws as technical
documents and trace the policies they enact in the name of alleged public health. After tracing
the laws and speaking with the marginalized communities they affect the most, I could employ
collective mētis as a way to hopefully shed some light on how various communities engage with
disclosure requirements. At mentioned in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, there are currently 11
states (including Florida) that have laws and corresponding punishments for:
Sexually transmitted disease (STD), communicable, contagious, infectious disease
(STD/communicable/infectious disease) laws that criminalize or control behaviors that
can potentially expose another person to STDs/communicable/infectious disease. This
might include HIV. (Florida Statutes, 2023b)
What would be interesting is a case study analysis of how the laws are enacted and whether or
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not other LGBTQ+ communities abide by the rules the law dictates. A secondary aim would be
to examine how various marginalized communities discuss potential intimate partner
communication and the relationship to the trickster, which the next section takes up.
Mitigating Negative Effects of Trickster
The cautious nature of the trickster and the effects generated from community produced
tricksters through publics and counterpublics is another area for potential future research.
Examining the trickster in light of community-based research and rhetorical studies would be
helpful in figuring out ways to mitigate the negative effects of the trickster. As this dissertation
has shown, the trickster figure isn’t always used for a positive force, and many people likely
associate the trickster with negative connotations; however, the trickster has been shown to be
helpful for marginalized communities. Conceptually, tricksters are vague figures, but this study
showed that they can operationalize community norms, values, and expectations in order to
move against oppressive laws. Figuring out where to position the trickster in relation to
rhetorical studies and RHM would be a useful way to get at how the trickster moves through
spaces and how the trickster figure helps communities. Recognizing the potential negative
effects of the trickster could help avoid some of the issues Smith (2014) points out in his
research such as using the trickster to reify racist actions and laws. All the aforementioned points
lead me to consider the ways researcher positionality is essential to community-based research.
The following paragraph argues for future areas researcher positionality may benefit.
Researcher Positionality
One of the most promising future areas of research is how researcher positionality and
ethics are interrelated. There has been a revived interest in studying virtue ethics (e.g. Colton and
Holmes, 2018; Duffy, Gallagher, and Holmes, 2018; Frisicaro-Pawlowski, 2018), which includes
133
how ethics are a key part of community-based work. However, despite this increased work in
research methodologies and ethical considerations, there are few explicit recent discussions of
rhetorical research ethics (Bivens, 2017; McKee and Porter, 2009) even though there are clear
calls for the work to be examined in RHM. In fact, recent edited collections (McKinnon et al.,
2016; Melonçon and Scott, 2017; Middleton et al., 2011; Rai and Druschke, 2018) suggest that
rhetoricians are considering a new emphasis on research methodologies, many of which involve
empirically driven human subjects research with engagement in field sites and/or communities.
I find this lack of direct conversations problematic, and I intend to examine the relationship
between researcher positionality, ethics, and community-grounded research studies in RHM. One
way to get at this future research is to examine communities and their relationship with
researcher positionality. By carefully and ethically situating one’s own researcher positionality in
the community they are working with, I hope to better understand the role that positionality plays
in community-engaged research. Making this move in the future will allow me to critically
analyze how collective mētis may or may not work in other marginalized communities
particularly considering how research ethics and their values contribute to theory building and
community-based research in RHM. Next, I discuss how collective mētis can be expanded by
examining various medical issues and communities.
Collective Mētis in Myriad Contexts
Employing collective mētis in different contexts around issues of health and
policy is one way to extend the work of collective mētis and test its usefulness. Here, I heed the
call from J. Blake Scott, Lisa Melonçon, and Cathryn Molloy (2020) to incorporate a more
diverse and different community setting when framing collective mētis. I realize that my research
study presented here, while rhetorically rooted in theory and practice, doesn’t begin to
134
incorporate or attend to those in other marginalized spaces outside of this sample. One goal, then,
is to intentionally meet with other community members that may have a different way or ideas of
approaching this theory and its implications. For future research, I intend to do just that: listen to
other communities and commit to incorporating more scholarship about injustices that meet
RHM at the intersections of race, gender, and accessibility. Part of this work must come from the
ways that communities such as the one in this study communicate through various modalities.
There is room for future research in these modalities, as the next section presents.
Modalities and Potential Intimate Partner Communication
In order to move this research forward, I need more in-depth study into the
various modalities communities use and their import. The variations and differences presented
here suggest that modalities change the way community members select potential intimate
partners. Future research can also suggest how the translative state shapes intimate partner
selection in other LGBTQ+ communities. Rhetorical studies should examine this relationship as
this dissertation has shown me that modality selection is more meaningful than relationship
interest. One potential way to get to this future study is to analyze how the translative state may
speak to the complex nature of agentic moments that are not binary. In other words, what norms,
values, and expectations are essential for individuals and/or communities? Interrogating this
space may offer a more nuanced inspection into communication in marginalized communities
that are hidden to those outside of the community.
Safety was a surprising find in this dissertation, and I think that regarding the relationship
between safety of the community as a whole and individual members as it relates to the
modalities selected can illustrate more nuanced ways of how communities might interact with
each other. These interactions can also lead future researchers to different ways of considering
135
communication in communities and their relationship to modalities and laws. Future research can
better inform how other communities might consider agency and modalities, too.
Another future research idea would be to access community members profiles with their
consent. This might prove to be a difficult future research pursuit, but I think it would highlight
more complex ways community members discuss potential intimate partner selection with others
in the community and its relationship to laws. I intend to design a future study around the
enactment of collective mētis and online apps such as Grindr, Scruff, Hornet and their
relationship to potential intimate partner communication in order to elicit different ways
modalities affect the community. To this end, a study that further investigates the ways
community members communicate in person versus on dating apps such as Grinder would be
revealing of usually hidden communication practices. The best way to get to these confidential
spaces might be through the burgeoning field of graphic medicine. These future plans noted, the
following conclusion sums up this dissertation.
Conclusion
This study endeavors to accomplish three primary goals: to explore the relevance
of mētis in rhetorical studies and the rhetoric of health and medicine scholarly community; to
argue that collective mētis, taken as a new theory intended to empower marginalized community,
worked in a local LBGTQ+ community in Central Florida and is viable in other community
contexts; to examine community-based research methodologies in RHM. After tracing the
concept of mētis through rhetorical history, I found that current research limits the classical
Greek concept to individualized conceptions of cunning intelligence. Current research also
misses the unique and inventive ways queer counterpublic enclaves (Chávez, 2011) use
community norms, values, and expectations to usurp oppressive laws. The theory of collective
136
mētis argues for the use of three characteristics: rhetorical collective agencies, translative state,
and trickster-body as community actant. Each of these characteristics are important as they
permit collective mētis to reflect community goals through publics and counterpublics theory.
Keyed to this theory is the trickster figure. The trickster is able to seamlessly move between
boundaries and create new ones, protecting community members from the effects of dangerous
publics. Although the trickster-body isn’t always a beneficial entity for communities that attempt
to denigrate others, the efficacious nature of the trickster empowers marginalized communities
against hegemonic power structures. The power of the trickster is undeniable, and community
members in Central Florida employ this figure to not only bypass disclosure laws, but to actively
move against law requirements.
The implications of this research are many for rhetorical studies and RHM
including ethical implications and creating theory as a creative building research methodology. I
also answer Lisa Melonçon & J. Blake Scott’s (2018) call in RHM to extend and push
methodological practice forward by taking into consideration community-based research and its
relationship to researcher positionality. In this way, I argue for an extension of the role
researcher positionality plays in research design (Powell and Takayoshi, 2012; Scott and Gouge,
2019; Markham, 2018) and intend to expand these ideas in future research.
When I first started my graduate journey, I had no way of knowing if collective mētis
would: 1) work as a theory; and/or 2) help the marginalized communities I set out to help.
Although I created collected mētis and argued for its powerful cunning intelligence, I am
constantly reminded by the theory that it cannot be captured; rather, it is always and already at
work within marginalized communities. Thankfully, I intend to continue my investigative
journey into the term and its collective community power potential. Through this endeavor and
137
community activism, I hope to help more Toms stay alive because they are “so rich in
[collective] mētis they can only be taken by their own traps” (Detienne & Vernant, 1978, p. 39).
138
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Appendix A: Participant Recruitment Flyer
156
Appendix B: Participant Interview Questions
First, obtain verbal consent. -Participant #
Introductory Questions
1. I’m asking this next question because I want to make sure there is adequate
representation from the whole community
a. Please tell me what you identify as your gender, sexuality, age, and race.
2. Are you single, partnered, or something else entirely?
3. When you engage with a potential intimate partner, do you prefer to use digital platforms
(such as Grindr, Scruff, Hornet, Jack’d, Her, etc.) or meet in person?
a. Please explain why you chose the option you chose.
For Those Who Engage Online
1. When you attempt to engage with a potential intimate partner, what digital platforms
(such as Grindr, Scruff, Hornet, Jack’d, Her, etc.) do you typically use?
a. Why do you use this/these one(s) in particular?
2. When encountering a potential intimate partner online, do you tend to read the person’s
profile that you are engaging with?
a. If so, what types of things do you look for and why?
b. If not, why do you not read the information on the app profile?
3. Does anyone’s sexual preferences come up during your exchanges?
a. Why or why not?
4. If a potential intimate partner has a profile that mentions they’re on PrEP, how do you
feel about them saying this?
a. Does this information, either way, change if you are willing to engage with that
person intimately?
5. Do you ever encounter a profile that doesn’t mention anything about sexual preferences
or HIV status?
a. How does this make you feel about this person as a potential intimate partner?
6. If a potential intimate partner has a profile that mentions they’re HIV positive, how do
you feel about this?
a. Does this information, either way, change if you are willing to engage with that
person intimately?
i. If you do engage with the person, is this information discussed?
1. Why or why not?
157
7. Did you know that it is technically illegal for a person who is HIV+ in the state of Florida
to withhold their positive status from a potential partner regardless of safety measures?
a. Answer
i. Does this bother you? Why or why not?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
For Those Who Meet F2F
Why do you prefer meeting potential intimate partners in person?
a. Where you typically meet people?
Have you ever met a potential intimate partner online?
What types of things do you talk about as relevant to the potential intimate partner?
Does anyone’s sexual preferences come up during your exchanges?
a. Why or why not, do you think?
If a potential intimate partner mentions they’re on PrEP, how do you feel about this?
a. Does this information, either way, change if you are willing to engage with that
person intimately?
Do you ever encounter someone that you know may be not wholly honest about their
sexual status, but doesn’t mention serostatus?
If a potential intimate partner mentions they’re HIV positive, how do you feel about this?
a. Does this information, either way, change if you are willing to engage with that
person intimately?
i. If you do engage with the person, is this information discussed?
1. Why or why not?
Did you know that it is technically illegal for a person who is HIV+ in the state of Florida
to withhold their positive status from a potential partner regardless of safety measures?
a. Answer
i. Does this bother you? Why or why not?
Ending Questions
1. Would you like to add anything at all to this interview that has to do with how you
communicate with potential intimate partners?
2. Lastly, do you have any questions for me?
158
Appendix C: IRB Exemption Letter
159