Toward a Theory of

Rhetorical Privacy
Charles Woods (he/him)
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
May 22, 2024
 Introductions
• Privacy and surveillance exist on a continuum.
• Conceptualizations of privacy are contextual (rhetorical) and rely on
complex histories and legalities.
• Attempts to define rhetoric refrain attempts to define privacy
• We can’t set surveillance aside in discussions of privacy.
• I will work toward a theory of rhetorical privacy defined by the
privacy aesthetic.
 Part I: Tyrannies
• Aristotle’s two spheres of life: polis and oikos
• Heather Suzanne Woods: we are constantly living in digitality
• Movement to written discourse prompts discussion of terms of service
documents.
• Feminists have critiqued privacy claiming impossibility and offering
reconstructions of privacy as essential.
• What does a virtuous privacy look like today?
 Part II: Collisions
• “The Right to Privacy” essay arrived alongside the development of the
earliest writing curricula in American universities
• Perelman’s and Olbrechts-Tyteca: universal audience.
• Habermas: intersubjective agreements.
• Privacy and reproductive justice, Covid-19, and algorithms
• How does the design of the policy support and/or work against the
stated values of the company/data collecting body?
 Part III: Aesthetics
Schep’s Design Principles
1. privacy first
2. think like a hacker
3. collect as little data as
possible
4. protect the data
5. understand identity
6. open the black box
7. turn the user into a designer
8. technology is not neutral
The Privacy Aesthetic
1. attune to the oblique ubiquity of
rhetorics of privacy and
surveillance
2. recognize the influence of ToS
3. understand “the body” and “the
digital” as essential for new
surveillance technologies
4. consider the importance of geo-
location regarding data collection
 Conclusions
• A theory of rhetorical privacy valuing the privacy aesthetic in design
of privacy policies favors offers a renewed approach to overcoming
inequity on the privacy-surveillance continuum–which is initiated in
ToS documents.
• It helps us better understand what rhetoric does: test ideas, assist
advocacy, distribute power, discover facts, shape knowledge, and build
communities.
• How does privacy help us test ideas and discover facts? Assist
advocacy and distribute power? Shape knowledge and build
communities?
Toward a Theory of
Rhetorical Privacy
Charles Woods (he/him)
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Rhetoric Society of America Conference
May 22, 2024