he position of the hands al firsl is, both folded horiwmal fonvards as expressed in lhe notation
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
mes noted oftener than absolutely necessary, and some transitions arc of necessity omitted. It i
more embodied rhetoric
am aware it will be said, that written language is only a copy of that which is spoken
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."
but we have ample proof, that this did not arise from a principle of neces-sity, but conveniency
What would Siegert have to say about this?
or language, in its full extent, means, any way or method whatsoever, by which all that passes in the mind of one man
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?
Oratory is the cornerstone of this enterprise precisely because it combines the arts with practical political use,
"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...
et if Ornament be wholly neglected very few will regard us
Reinforcing her idea that style matters.
when we pretend lo teach others what we do not understand our !\elves
again with the authenticity
standing in 1hc £.Hay, in order to enslave people lu his opinion�
Wow, she's clever. But, uh, slavery is still just bad. So Locke had a point.
t much the poverty and narrowness of their minds, have taught them perhaps to rcpcut their Catechism and a few good Sentences, to read a Chapter and .my their Prayers, tho perhaps with as Jillie Understanding as a Parrot, and fancied that this was Chunn enough to secure them against the temptations of the present world and to waft them lo a better: and
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.
no place for that more abominable one of betraying and seducing unwary Innocence.
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.
You disdain the base ungenerous Prnctice of pretending Kindness where you really mean none
She seems to really care about authenticity in rhetoric.
you study to engage men in the love of true Peity and Goodnl!ss,
Is this a connection to the rhetoric of preaching?
She brielly mentions delivery, calling it "Pronunciation" and claiming that women have an advantage over men here, in that their voices arc naturally more plcusing and better suited lo the mostly private occasions on which Astell imagines women will speak
An interesting flip on the "shrill" description of women's voices.
Henry Vlll,
...who had his own issues with women...
f only she had been male.•
Scholarly dispute, says Descartes, turns on the desire to win an argument, not the desire to lind the truth
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??
Bacon by no means rejects the art of eloquence.
eloquence as tied to addressing all of the faculties; therefore, eloquence as tied to senses?
who claimed that rhetoric obscured the truth by encouraging the rn,e of ornamented rather than plain, direct language.
Orwell would agree.
See "Politics and the English Language"
�tudy �cthods of the two epoch
important
Speech and thought arc inseparable, in Vico'., view: They evolve together.
I would argue that speech, thought, AND writing evolve together.
To understand history, it is necessary lo reconstruct the consciousness of the time and place to be studied, using the myths and language of the time.
So, in other words, we can't ever truly understand history.
I Speak and VVrite as I Believe
Intensely subjective, but then opens up to outside judgment when "I ask your Pardon."
Intention of an Orator, or Use of Orations, is to Perswade the Auditors to be of the Orators Opinion or Belief,
intention and use wrapped up into one here might get tricky
ily to be distinguished in society, by the soundness of their understanding and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind. The ascendant, which they acquire, gives a
"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.
rejection of knowledge derived from either testimony or revelation.
Miranda Fricker would call this testimonial injustice.
Shunning the law, for which he had begun to study, Hume pursued his own course of reading
What's with all of these guys being self-taught?
Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken ~~-•k..l, against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived
Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken ~~-•k..l, against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived
he names of simple ideas tlie least doubtful. c8. Fr
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?
Our good or evil depending not on their decrees, we may safely be ignorant of their notions: and therefore in the reading of them, if they do not use their words with a due clearness and per-spicuity, we may Jay them aside, and without any injury done them, resolve thus with ourselves.
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?
Though the names glory and grati-tude be the same in every man's mouth through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea which every one thinks on or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men using the same language.
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.
as the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds to a deaf man, need not here be mentioned.
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.
ords having naturally
How can he say words are "natural"?
but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition \ l .;.s.~l' of men,
what is to be said about the noises animals make?
hese two uses are very distinct; and a great deal Jess exactness will serve in the one than in the other, as we shall see in what follows.
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.
recording and communicating our thoughts
But, couldn't we argue that the words also shape the thoughts? Thinking of Ong here.
Many •. ,~ . .• .., words name r
Names...connects to...someone? I can't remember.
media do notemerge independently and outside of specific historical practices. Yet atthe same time history is itself a system of meaning that operates across amedia-technological abyss of non-meaning that must remain hidden
I was with Siegert until the "media-technological abyss of non-meaning that must remain hidden." Why must non-meaning remain hidden?
Against the ‘communicative reason’ as an allegedtelosof mass media, and against the technophobe obsession with seman-tic depth, the partisans of the unmoored signifier embraced the history ofcommunication engineering that had been blocked out by humanist his-toriography.
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.
Lacanian mirror stage
"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
f the telegraph, the telephone or the radio wereanalysed as mass media at all, then it was with a view towards uncoveringtheir military origin and exposing the negative horizon of war of massmedia and their alleged public status
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)
here is no subject area, no ontologicallyidentifiable domai
Is this because media is under the umbrella of epistemology?
were much too offended by thissudden invasion into their academic habitat to ask what theoretical jus-tification lay behind this forced entry.
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.
the base of intellectual and cultural shifts
I wonder about connections to the Enlightenment here? A focus on tools and processes rather than creative products...
It had no intention of competingwith film studies, television studies, computer science, or other such dis-ciplines. I
In the same way, posthumanism doesn't invalidate or dismiss humanism. Instead, it explores humanism. I'm reminded of the supra-disciplinary in Braidotti.
performativity isactually a contestation of the unexamined habits of mind that grant lan-guage and other forms of representation more power in determining ourontologies than they deserve
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.
one should avoid anycynicism.
Braidotti called out my first annotation about climate change. She knew.
It is a theoretically-powered carto-graphic tool that aims at achieving adequate understanding of theseprocesses of undoing the huma
posthumanism as a TOOL to understanding
and creating, as Braidotti says elsewhere
This understanding of matter animates the compos-ition of posthuman subjects of knowledge – embedded, embodied andyet flowing in a web of relations with human and non-human others.
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.
composes a new ontological framework ofbecoming-subjects
posthumanism as knowledge creation
tivity is not restricted to bound individuals, but is rather aco-operative trans-species e
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.
ffirm
Speaking of maps and ethics:
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/01/06/why-world-maps-are-misleading
embrainment of the body and embodiment ofthe mind
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.
ow does posthumanismreconfigure the concepts and practices of discourse production, and whatdoes rhetoric have to contribute to the articulation of the posthuman?
Essential questions here that seem vital to the rest of the course.
hallenges distinctions between subjectivitie
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).
re-distributions of difference and iden-tity”
Ahh, the braided stream metaphor returns.
hile posthuman reinscriptions of thebody and subjectivity do not return us to the category of the human, theydo not function as a refusal of that category either. Tha
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.
(biologically, ecologically, and socially
As is rhetoric, as last week's readings indicated.
e “inhuman
Why are these connections necessarily inhuman? Because they are on their way elsewhere rather than existing in the self?
Thus, by design, eXistenZ ( t h e f i l m a n d t h egame) links humans, animals, and machines so intimately that it makesvery little sense to attempt to distinguish among these three categories.
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.
"A story should be seen as a battle,"
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.
but rather recruit from earlier, shared capacities—it is only later, through processes ofnonlinear coevolution, that they shake out as distinctive human practices
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?
Rhetoric is a cosmetic, and bad girls wear makeup as well as good ones, probably better.
Um, excuse my critical comment, but ew? I hate this analogy??
The good kind is used in good causes, the bad kind in bad causes
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?
good man as well as a good orator?
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?
isonwrphi
isomorphic: "being of identical or similar form, shape, or structure"
