Decolonial Rhetorics of Defiance, Gender, and Puerto Rican Nationalism Across Oceanic Borderspaces

In her research presentation, Dr. Karrieann Soto Vega advances a transnational feminist rhetorical history of Lolita Lebrón, a Puerto Rican nationalist, woman activist who engaged in an armed attack against the US Congress in 1954, as a decolonial rhetoric of defiance. In this work, Soto Vega highlights the importance of  placing intersectional attention to gender performance and geopolitical location in social movement rhetorics. Specifically, by analyzing Lolita Lebrón, who grew up in relative poverty in Puerto Rico, and her move to New York City in the 1940s being part of a broader mass migration, as influencing her act of violence against US empire, Soto Vega's work illustrates how Lebrón's dissent cannot be divorced from third world women positionalities, while highlighting the Puerto Rican nationalist tradition Lebron became a part of. Ultimately, this work emphasizes the relevance of situating diasporic rhetorical figures within their shifting contexts to account for the complexity of gender, geopolitics, colonialism, and the historical development of rhetorical activity.