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@rhetcompunicorns
John, Emily, and Renae's Notes from Rickert's Introduction
Throughout the introduction Rickert weaves the cave paintings found in Lascaux, France as an example of ambient rhetoric. However, his specific task with the introduction is to “lay out the basic meanings of ambience, address some central terms, such as attunement, and then work through the thought of some of the key theorists, researches, and practitioners who underpin the rest of the book.” He also “examine[s] Thomas Cole’s self-admittedly conservative definition of rhetoric, using a brief but specific example to demonstrate its differences from a definition of rhetoric as ambient” (5).
Rickert first traces the concept of ambience through several centuries of scholarship (5-10). The word itself is Latin, and “largely it refers to what is lying around, surrounding, encircling, encompassing, or environing” (5). The French “added an aesthetic dimension,” allowing ambience to describe effects linked to “work, practice, or place” (6). Rickert backs up to describe ambience as akin to a Greek concept, “one that suggests that the subject/object dichotomy characteristic of modern thought has not always held such sway” (7). The Greek term to periechon has “active, embracing connotations” that have been taken up in contemporary scholarship (7). Ambience today is linked to perception (7), attunement (8), and scientific research (10). Therefore, “ambient rhetoric opens us onto these insights and thus is less an answer in itself than an invitation to disclose anew, to build further, and so begin to dwell” (37).
Rickert adds to the existing scholarship on ambience by looking at it through four different lenses: contemporary cognitive science, hermeneutic phenomenology (Heidegger), twentieth-century ambient music, and emerging stances on materiality (speculative materialism, “thing theory”, etc.) (11).
Through Heidegger, Rickert reexamines the subject-object relationship. He questions the position that subjects do things to objects and that objects do not impart any change on subjects (11, 13, 16). He later brings Heidegger’s work into conversation with cognitive and computer science to show how these sciences have worked to blend the line between subject and object (see computer mouse example on 18).
Rickert goes on to show, through Latour’s “political ecology” and Heidegger’s “dwelling”, that the subject-object/object-subject relationship is inseparable (26-7).
Next, Rickert discusses ambient music as a way of illustrating his concept of ambient rhetoric. “Ambient music, I am arguing, brings together at a practical level many of the thematic strands I have been discussing, including ambience’s connection to rhetoricity” (29). Music “facilitates listening at various levels of attention”; it also “generates a sense of potentially nonexistent place” (28). Rickert then turns to technology, describing it as acting on us with a rhetorical force that goes unnoticed--until said technology breaks (31). He goes on to argue “ambient intelligence radically changes who we are in our environs; it situates us differently in the world, evoking other ways of being. It… reveals rhetoric to us differently than it has appeared heretofore” (33).
Perhaps the overarching purpose of this text is outlined at the very end of the introduction where Rickert works to break down a common assumption of rhetorical theory. He says “Rhetorical theory tends to assume that intent equals result… the causality of rhetorical intent actualized through rhetorical work is often assumed as an unquestionable given” (35). Yet, “[b]ehind the conventional notion of intention lies a model of human being as an autonomous, self-knowing, subjective agent. Everything I have here described works to undo and disperse this model as a reduced view of human being” (36). Rickert describes the problematic emphasis on intent and self-consciousness (35-36). “...at any given moment, we are only partially conscious of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what will result from it. When we tether intent to self-consciousness, we cut off large swaths of human activity from rhetorical practice in our rhetorical theory” (36). Instead of limiting rhetoric to human actors Rickert wants us to expand our understanding of what can act rhetorically.
Ambience:
“It is not an impartial medium but an ensemble of variables, forces, and elements that shape things in ways difficult to quantify or specify. These elements are simultaneously present and withdrawn, active and reactive, and complexly interactive among themselves as much as with human beings” (7).
Perception:
Rickert describes “the necessity for an ecological conception of the perceptual environment in which various levels of attention and attunement are in play” (7).
Attunement:
“Attunement is not additive [to an environment]. Rather, there is a fundamental entanglement, with the individuation of particular facets being an achieved disclosure. Thus, wakefulness to ambience is… an attunement” (8).
Mood:
“Mood is not reducible to psychological or conscious cognitive states, to ‘interior’ phenomena, since it is constitutively entangled within and emerges from the environment in which we are situated and therefore also is a prerequisite for intelligibility as such” (Ratcliffe quoted in Rickert 14)
Thing Theory:
“‘not a theory about the cultural significance of objects’ (110). Rather, it is about the power of objects themselves…. Thing theory wants to give back a sense of voice, of ‘objectness,’ to the thing, so that it is not understood exclusively within human meanings. The thing has a material thrust that coexists with and emerges within the surrounding ambient culture but is not exactly equivalent to it” (22).
Political ecology:
From Latour. “Rhetoric is implicated in and gathered across things… things cannot be separated from the forms of scientific production that make them show up for us” (26). Latour argues for an “object-oriented rhetoric” (27).
Dwelling:
“Dwelling is an attunement that can generate various kinds of knowledge, in particular a knowledge of how the world gives back, as it were, or how the world transcendent of human thought and power is integral to how life takes shape” (27).
WASHINGTONAccording to a report released Monday by the Brookings Institution, the single most effective argument in favor of social reform continues to be indignantly saying aloud what the current year is.
Technology Invention Exchange
I will never forget my first few weeks of grad school, when it seemed like the only way to understand a good amount of the texts was to do make a list of all the words and phrases that I didn't understand so that I could hunt down synonyms that would make the text seem more accessable. Dictionary.com (both the full site and the app) became my best friend. Before then, I knew that there was a search engine that enabled me to search the web for things that the dictionary did not have an entry for; however, I didn't know that phrases could be entered into the site's search engine as well. The thesaurus was especially useful in most cases. When I was feeling extra amibitious, I would rewrite certain sections of texts that seemed really important to my understanding of the piece I was reading to help me make meaning. Over the course of the semester, I realized that certain terms appeared in other articles, and my wonky vocabulary list that I had invented had become part of my memory and thus helped me create new meaning. Before long, I didn't have to refer to rely so heavily on my list to get in to assignments. The list that the site helped me invent also served as a checklist of lexis that may be good to include when writing assignments approached. The ultimate test of success would come when I received graded assignments back. If an instructor expressed uncertainty in the area where I was testing my new knowledge, I knew I had to revisit my list. Fortunately, Dictionary.com helped me invent a usefull list that spared me from that embarassment!
An Attempt to Locate Topos
For starters, I must admit that this assignment made me a bit uncomfortable initially until I realized that it was an opportunity to invent (topos, perhaps?) a new understanding. After I embraced this uncertainty, I reread some notes of what I thought I learned from readings and class to identify what I already knew in order to build new knowledge based on it.
In one of our readings this week, Collin Brooke sets out to explain the ecology of invention early on. In order to understand the time frame and space for which invention happens, the author cites LeFevre's and Anis Bawarshi's texts asserting, "If, for LeFevre, invention must be redefined as 'social act,' then for Bawarshi, genres provide the 'sites for action' that correspond to those acts" (64). In this text, genres are both conceptional and material locations that help produce an individual's rhetorical goals. Miller actually helped me see genres in this discussion as topos/topoi. If we see topos as a generative space or an opening, a moment void of boundaries in a rhetorical situation, I can see Brooke's use of genres as topoi in the ecology of invention
Apps and devices make it easy to track your personal data, all the way down to your DNA.
This story reminded me of our discussion in class last night, questioning if invention is a more about discovery or creativity. When we collect data, are we inventing or merely selecting and rearranging?
Here one deals with inventing as a process or activity and considers it in ways that will aid a communicator find materials and arguments and will help a listener and critic to understand and evaluate messages." (A possible function/purpose of invention?)
Wallace, Topoi and The Problem of Invention
Can (or should) We Deconstruct Argumentation from Rhetoric (or vice versa)?
Rhetorical Traditions taught me to think far beyond defining rhetoric in terms of persuasion or argumentation, then I read this...
"The new rhetoric is a theory of argumentation..."--In Wallace's "Topoi and the Problems of Invention"
Identifications are critical in solving violent crimes committed by strangers, but victims' memories are not like video cameras. By Sandra Guerra Thompson.
I wonder how Simonides would respond to this.
What would happen if we turned this text into a visual interpretation?
In "Creativity and the Commonplace", I had to stop and think about this for a while, and I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but maybe it's because I misunderstand it in part. Therefore, I'm wondering if coming up with some visual analogy would help. I've been trying to come up with one, but I'm still working on it..
"In the subsequent history of philosophical speculation on creativity, memory is the basis of invention, invention provides the materials for memory, and commonplaces are the devices of both invention and memory." (Pg. 199)
Discussion Question
In the article that's a supplement to Aristotle's Rhetoric, there is a constant reference to "species" of rhetoric and "species" of speech. I wonder what this particular word chose buys us. Does it help us make meaning in a different way than simply using types or genres?
For English teachers it means that we join our students in the rediscovery of the reality of our common lives; the critical assessment of the language which builds our knowledge of the world is the primary step in the transformation of that reality. With his assumption about the role of language in creating the world in which we live, Freire can say that "teaching men to read and write is no longer a matter of . . . memorizing an alienated word, but a difficult apprenticeship in naming the world." Naming the world means learning to see and hear, learning to listen, perhaps even to "flowery apostrophes to Nature" with which Kampf is so impatient. Learning to see what you're looking at...
The Problem of Problem Solving
The vital question for teachers, it seems to me, is this: Can we change the social context in which English composition is taught by the way we teach English composition?
The Problem of Problem Solving
...vitalism relies on a collection of informal methods of invention -- using lists of topics to elaborate on by looking up references, writing from experience, reading essays and applying their ideas, or using look-think-write procedures based on images (33). Composition begins to use these informal methods, according to Young, because relying on other disciplines was not working. But he also sees informal approaches as insufficient because they assume invention cannot be taught directly.
Mapping Rhetoric and Composition (p. 22-23)
'From its earliest days in the 1950s, contributors constructed then reconstructed a changing set of conceptual Venn diagrams positioning rhetoric, linguistics, science, social science and especially literature in relation to composition' (451). The debates revolve around how much influence these disciplines should be allowed to have on composition and which disciplines should be excluded from composition.
Mapping Rhetoric and Composition (p. 13)
And prosopopoeia (personification) is not only an historical exercise but applicable also to oratory and dialogue and poetry, and is most advantageous in everyday life and in our conversations with each other, and (understanding of it) is most useful in study of prose writings.
Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (p. 4)