It’s undeniably a quizzical situation. For the middle-aged rhetorician it’s the comically late age of the humanities/English Studies and the tragically late age of humans (cf. climate change) in the midst of a still spry rhetorical universe that will go on without us. I can only imagine a generation of mid-century factory workers punching clocks […]
Category: realist rhetoric
The last part of a three part essay. Here are parts one and two. This brings me momentarily to the Stover article, but Latour’s interview ends with some remarks about the university (and rhetoric). Latour notes that rhetoric, from the start, is fundamentally a way to teach people: It means that you can take someone […]
Here are links to parts one and three of this essay. Instead the purportedly “big” new materialist rhetoric is instead tiny, minimal even. Rhetoric is not so huge as to cover civilization. It does not take over after psychology explains coming to salience. I don’t believe there is a “realm of rhetoric,” neither in consciousness […]
This morning I’m writing about the place of rhetoric in a new materialist, plural ontology (starting with some comments from Latour) and moving into rhetoric’s place in the humanities (starting with a recent article in American Affairs, “There is no case for the humanities” by Justin Stover). I’ve divided this into three posts, so here […]
Perhaps you are familiar with the recent and excellent essay collection, Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition (edited by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers). If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, but I’m not here to talk about it today. It’s just the inspiration for the title of this missive, where I […]
Despite the title, this isn’t really about animal rhetoric, instead a video and a recent article about evolution. The video below explains how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park not only altered the ecosystem but the physical geography. (Spoiler: wolves chased the deer out of certain areas of the park, allowing for trees and […]
One of the projects I have been regularly pursuing (and I’m certainly not alone in this) is investigating the implications of rhetoric’s disciplinary-paradigmatic insistence on a symbolic, anthropocentric scope of study and entertaining the possibilities of rethinking those boundaries. I’ve been employing a mixture of DeLanda, Latour, and other “new materialist/realist/etc.” thinkers, always with the understanding […]
Categories
cognition's earthrise
If you do not know then Wikipedia will happily tell you that the 1968 photo known as “Earthrise” (unsurprisingly taken by an astronaut) has been called the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Why? Presumably because it presents the Earth as a cohesive yet fragile entity. In any case, “Earthrise” captures something about the ecological turn […]
Organization is a common topic of discussion in writing instruction. Often, students are asked to produce “well-organized” essays and organization is a familiar criteria for assessment. Organization generally refers to the rhetorical cannon of arrangement, but somehow it makes more sense to say to students that their essays should be well-organized instead of well-arranged. Organization also […]
I am at work on a chapter in my book that deals with cognition as it relates to a realist ontology and rhetoric, and I’m hoping this exercise will help me to crystalize my thoughts. I’m drawing on some familiar concepts (at least to me) from distributed cognition and extended mind to DeLanda’s fascinating and bizarre […]
Alex Reid 