LAUSR

Wingard, and J Cisneros; it serves as a good model on how rhetorical and communication scholars could deploy theory-driven rhetorical analysis to unpack the values and ideologies embedded in legal texts. While critical of the existing asylum and refugee systems, McKinnon does not suggest a wholesale dismissal of this practice; rather, she remains attuned to the material conditions and needs of the claimants throughout her critique of the way dominant legal discourse and evaluations restrict certain gender performances and lived experiences. McKinnon’s work prompts us to consider what discursive and political recourse claimants have beyond the immigration court, and whether there is space in the formal legal context at all that would allow for subversive deployment of dominant existing tropes about gender and sexuality.