reminds me of Dr. Rivers' ambient captioning--finding ways to represent sound using text could relate to finding ways to represent performative action using notation

more embodied rhetoric

Others have theorized that this is just not true. Yagelski sees writing and thought as running more fluidly together with experiences and "being in the world."

What would Siegert have to say about this?

A somewhat indirect construction of human? Language is located in the mind? Therefore, humans have minds that they use for language? Or language that they use for minds?

"practical" political use? an interesting adjective to choose. I often associate practical with pragmatic, both connotatively emotionless words, but political is often associated with heightened emotion.

Then again, some politicians run on pragmatism...

Reinforcing her idea that style matters.

again with the authenticity

Wow, she's clever. But, uh, slavery is still just bad. So Locke had a point.

This seems to expand upon an earlier annotation that asked whether rhetoric was innate or had to be taught. Here, Astell seems to indicate the "parroting" is innate, but complex rhetoric must be taught.

Is Astell setting a standard for persuasion here? She doesn't want to "betray" or "seduce" the audience, so I wonder if she'll suggest alternatives.

She seems to really care about authenticity in rhetoric.

Is this a connection to the rhetoric of preaching?

An interesting flip on the "shrill" description of women's voices.

...who had his own issues with women...

Smart guy. So, how does he suggest finding the truth? "...taking as true only that which the mind cannot find reason to doubt"? Can we truly eradicate doubt??

eloquence as tied to addressing all of the faculties; therefore, eloquence as tied to senses?

Orwell would agree.

See "Politics and the English Language"

important

I would argue that speech, thought, AND writing evolve together.

So, in other words, we can't ever truly understand history.

Intensely subjective, but then opens up to outside judgment when "I ask your Pardon."

intention and use wrapped up into one here might get tricky

"the superiority of their faculties" makes them sound super-human, while the taste is said to be "distinguished in society." I'm sensing some tension here in how society and nature interact.

Miranda Fricker would call this testimonial injustice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Fricker

What's with all of these guys being self-taught?

So, Locke is trying to establish somewhat of a hierarchy of language based in clarity. Names of simple substances are closest to the Truth of the substance. "Philosophical" words are furthest from Truth because what the concepts/things they represent are most difficult to nail down. I wonder, then, if we can translate this to exploring the human--do we have a hierarchy of understanding? Or a hierarchy of Truest representation?

Hmm. I'm thinking back to my rant about language clarity. Is Locke trying to say that we shouldn't bother with trying to analyze the "true meaning" of an old complex text because our interpretation will be made under different linguistic conditions and therefore will have inherent inaccuracies? So we just shouldn't bother?

I'm reminded here of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"--the ways that language is manipulated to evoke feeling or a widespread reaction although it may not be grounded in feeling or reaction. One of Orwell's examples is fascism.

Ah, a disability connection to be made here. So, words don't necessarily serve all humans, but are considered natural? An interesting turn to take, Locke.

How can he say words are "natural"?

what is to be said about the noises animals make?

Uh oh. I'm sensing that my earlier (see: literally two paragraphs earlier) claim that Locke argues for "understood meanings" above all else might be challenged.

But, couldn't we argue that the words also shape the thoughts? Thinking of Ong here.

Names...connects to...someone? I can't remember.

I was with Siegert until the "media-technological abyss of non-meaning that must remain hidden." Why must non-meaning remain hidden?

Something julietdesnoyer said in last week's reading about selfies not actually be self-obsessed or narcissistic struck me here. Sharing selfies is literally sharing the self.

"mirror stage (French: stade du miroir) is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves) from the age of about six months." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage

I'm reminded of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See in which an adolescent boy in WWII is seen as a genius radio repairman and has a "natural skill for circuitry." While his efforts do affect the 'fictional construct' of the public sphere, circuitry is narrated as something that makes him feel more alive, more "human." He serves the war effort simply to stay connected to his humanity through radio repairs. (pun intended)

Is this because media is under the umbrella of epistemology?

Ah, the "technology isn't my thing" defense. "Leave me to my books, get away from me with that ebook."

Rather, I think Siegert is suggesting that, like humanism/posthumanism, we can use new media to explore what we consider to be media? Is that a stretch? Maybe.

I wonder about connections to the Enlightenment here? A focus on tools and processes rather than creative products...

In the same way, posthumanism doesn't invalidate or dismiss humanism. Instead, it explores humanism. I'm reminded of the supra-disciplinary in Braidotti.

I'm reminded here of the Lit. Theory readings for this week. One of the theorists compares poetry to drama in its performativity, and its performativity is exactly the reason that a poem's "meaning" cannot be categorized or nailed down. In the same way, is Barad pointing to the subjectivity in examining what it means to be human? If being human involves performativity, our current rhetoric will never be able to come close to capturing it...which I suppose is where "posthumanism" comes into play as we search for new ways to grapple with articulating subjectivity.

Braidotti called out my first annotation about climate change. She knew.

posthumanism as a TOOL to understanding

and creating, as Braidotti says elsewhere

embedded, embodied, yet flowing

the phrasing feels like a return to the feminist lens, somehow, though I'm not sure I can articulate quite how.

posthumanism as knowledge creation

I'm reminded here of Kant's subjective universality--something that comes from within us but is also present in all of us. Yet, it is not a metaphysical or objective force.

Speaking of maps and ethics:

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/01/06/why-world-maps-are-misleading

Interesting to think of the World of Tomorrow film here--or, "San Junipero" for the Black Mirror fans. The separation of body and mind, or the hierarchy of the mind over the body, is often the subject of futuristic, post-apocalyptic stories. To see the relationship described as a continuum, however, sparks completely different questions.

Granted, it's hard to have a body when the planet is dying.

Essential questions here that seem vital to the rest of the course.

Another good way to articulate the mission of posthumanism--challenging distinctions between subjectivities (the arbitrary, "man-made" [?] characteristics we assign to human and nonhuman categories).

Ahh, the braided stream metaphor returns.

A great distinction to make--we're not refusing or negating the socially-accepted idea of human; rather, we are challenging its narrowness and examining it as a "carrier bag," asking ourselves "which one?"

SHAMELESS PLUG FROM LAST WEEK'S DISCUSSION.

As is rhetoric, as last week's readings indicated.

Why are these connections necessarily inhuman? Because they are on their way elsewhere rather than existing in the self?

Up until this point, I was reminded of the Black Mirror episode titled "Playtest." The episode plays with a lot of those concepts on what we consider real or not real and how time passes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtest_(Black_Mirror)

I'm thinking here of male species of animals that fight one another to secure a female mate. In that line of thinking, hero stories are secretly stories of men attempting to secure the ultimate container--a woman's womb that will eventually contain their genetic line.

Didn't someone else (maybe @sophist_monster in class) discuss how it's sort of odd that rhetoric is treated as its own discipline for this exact reason? That rhetoric is in and of everything else, so trying to put it in its own bubble seems counter-intuitive?

Um, excuse my critical comment, but ew? I hate this analogy??

So, do we define the rhetoric as it is situated within a "good" or "bad" cause? Could the same rhetoric be used in both contexts and therefore be characterized as "good" in once case but "bad" in the other?

I just asked my English 1900 students to read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," which pretty well convinced them of that a good man is often not a "good" orator, if we consider a "good" orator to use complex language and metaphors. Orwell's essay explains that such oration likely means the orator is hiding their "true" intentions in some way. Obviously, the issue is far more complex than that, so what nuances ARE at play here? What is a "good" man? What is a "good" orator?

isomorphic: "being of identical or similar form, shape, or structure"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/isomorphic