It seems like Austin wants to turn rhetoric into more of a "science."

As a reader, its interesting to see Sheridan refer to the audience as "hearers." What does this say about his assumptions of his audience? Or was this choice intentional, to show that those who are hearing-capable assume that language is strictly verbal and sound based?

lol. This guy really loves locke.

We think we are more "acquainted" with language than other creatures and so having language is a marker of what makes us human. Obviously this makes clear cuts around what language is and what the human is.

Thinking we know everything also makes us think there's nothing left to learn.

This has really important consequences in terms of post-humanist thinking! If we presume that there is a true definition of anything, we are allowing experience, culture, language to limit us. It is better to presume an every shifting definition of the human that responds to the situation at hand. Starting a discussion of the human with the idea that we all obviously know what a human is, is extremely limiting.

I'm assuming this is referring to having vanity about how educated you are and what you "know."

I think we feel this way now with the internet. But its really just a certain kind of knowing and a certain kind of knowledge. It also depends on how you choose to approach that knowledge.

Yikes

Locke would agree, yeah?

What is false taste? Does this mean your taste isn't attuned to the collective, or that you are literally falsifying what you believe to be aesthetically pleasing?

........is this paragraph really a title.........

Accommodate, do not make the audience feel submissive...it seems unspoken that the audience for the woman rhetor is men.

Again, kind of taking a sexist notion (women should remain in the private sphere) and twisting it around into an argument that could empower women (women are actually better than men at practicing rhetoric within the private sphere, an area that is not inferior to the public sphere).

This is a weird argument to me. Is the assumption that if its logical, then its "true?" And there is one "truth" that we know innately?

So the Christian's virtuous reputation acts as its own form of rhetoric to convince the audience of the rhetor's truthfulness.

Our "taste" in what is good is innately human.

Ok fine, I guess that's kind of feminist.

Agreed...we tend to play fast and loose in labelling people, things, brands etc feminist when they really just involve women.

Astell is in a way working to expand how people defined the woman--maybe she can be more than just a wife or maybe she can be defined by more than her dowry or family wealth. Still, she has to work within the confines of the time, framing the school as a way to make the woman a better wife and mother or a better servant of god rather than something beyond those things.

This calls to mind Muckelbauer's discussion of rhetoric's "promiscuity." However Muckelbauer would probably not like the idea of calling rhetoric "interdisciplinary," because that would promote the idea that there are specific, stable "fields" that we may choose to combine with the "field" of rhetoric.

cc: Yagelski

Robert Yagelski basically makes this argument, citing Cartesian dualism as a major factor in why we're destroying our planet. In ignoring the interconnectivity of all things, we fail to understand the myriad effects our actions have on the (natural) world around us.

man, people really loved that guy huh?

Anyone can see a beautiful film and agree that it is beautiful because of their internal response to it; only the critic with delicacy and understanding can be trusted to explain what particular elements of the film make it beautiful

So, taste becomes a way to understand what has the most mass appeal, and so helps us to understand the best way to appeal to a particular audience?

Per my last comment: is being reductive and ignoring nuance the perversion?

Some violent wording here. What does Hume mean here by "natural?" Does he actually believe that anything is natural? How can we pervert anything when knowledge is constructed by sense data and thus not based in any objective truth? Am I totally misunderstanding Hume?

Right--beauty is about a relationship to a thing or an opinion about a thing, not about the thing itself. Beauty has as much to do with the viewer as it does with the beautiful object. Recognizing beauty or having taste involves a network of actors in a given context. Does Hume believe that it is our job to consolidate these recognitions into one general rule for recognizing?

Even if there is no "truth" and so no "true" or "pure" way to define right and wrong, we still need to come to some sort of agreement on what we generally believe is right or wrong within a given context.

It is built into the definition of these words that these are qualities we should strive for/that these are objectively good qualities (?)

So our understanding of what is "right" and "wrong" and our want to uphold such ideas is somewhat indebted to language and its inherent biases?

Would Hume be into the canon?

Is "standards of nature" another word for "examples?" Or is this just my brain trying to get a word to signify another word in order to understand it?

We "know" through a network--there is no one objective truth to be discovered but rather a version of a truth generated through a series of mental processes/decisions/operations/techniques/cuts.

Does this mean that Foucault asserts that our understanding of the body/human is constructed by how we talk about it/represent it?

So, social constructivism relies too much on the creations of humans (here, social constructions) to account for power relations/how we perceive matter (?)

So, social constructivism relies too much on the creations of humans (here, social constructions) to account for power relations/how we perceive matter (?)

Does this mean that Foucault asserts that our understanding of the body/human is constructed by how we talk about it/represent it?

Again, tagging for definition

tagging for definition

The connection between neoliberalism/capitalism and post-humanism has been fascinating so far, even when its a little over my head. Hopefully we can discuss more in class.

Is the question, how can we expand on our understanding of the human without in turn expanding opportunities for exploitation for profit?

This is so interesting! I'm also interested in what it would be like to connect post-humanism with queer theory and feminist theory to recalibrate how we think about reproduction and sexuality. Perhaps changing our emphasis on/understanding of human life (and so, reproduction) would allow us to move away from trying to legislate women's bodies/trying to control what a "family" structure should look like.

It seems that humanism is concerned with categorization, and post-humanism is concerned with merging, transgressing, and destroying categories, which allows those who are un-categorized or outside of what has been categorized as normatively human (those who are non-belonging) to be understood as post-humanist. Maybe?

Our definition of the human has historically included whatever group was allowed to have rights; we have also historically de-humanized groups in order to strip them of their rights.

I knew this guy was "with it"

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-calls-virgin-mary-the-first-ever-influencer_us_5c4e4310e4b0e1872d44f594

An interesting detour if you're up for it, in which Klein mentions the Pope's thoughts on ecology and anthropocentrism:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-visit-to-the-vatican

"Man as brand" AND "brand as man." Brands have identities now, and can even roast us on twitter.

https://www.thewrap.com/12-times-people-got-roasted-twitter-sassy-corporations-moonpie-taco-bell-photos/

But seriously...as we "brand" ourselves more and more (i'm thinking of the selves we present on instagram and twitter, and social media 'influencers'), the line between human and corporation online is seriously blurred.

This is kind of what Foucault was saying with "Self Writing," no?

Right--didn't we talk about Foucault being potentially "antihumanist" rather than posthumanist?

Here's the endnote, because scrolling to the bottom is a long journey:

The term ‘Anthropocene’, coined in 2002 by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, describes the current geological era as dominated by human action through technological mediation, consumerism and destruction of the resources of planet earth. It was officially adopted by the International Geological Congress in South Africa in August 2016.

We are constantly under the influence, and rhetoric is in the business of influencing. Everything is (influencing) everything. @abigail.jarvis

Machines do not simply exist in our service; they have helped to define what we think we are, and therefore have shaped how we engage with ourselves/the world. Our relationship with the machine is...symbiotic?

This makes me think of today's discussion about childhood language development--words as signals rather than symbols. Here, we might consider money as a form of rhetoric. It may be more productive to examine what it does/what it attempts to do/what it connects/what it transforms, rather than what it simply is.

I have nothing to say here really except whoa, this paragraph just blew my mind.

Interesting how Muckelbauer/Hawhee adopt Deleuze's use of "weapon" here (and interesting that Deleuze used "weapon" in the first place, although I don't know the context there)...is it used in place of "tool?" Is rhetoric violent/combative/defensive/competitive? What would Le Guin say about this?

"...simulacrum is defined as "a material image, made as a representation of some deity, person, or thing," as "something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities," and as "a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness, of something" (OED)."

http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/simulationsimulacrum.htm

(in Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.

or

A thing which is hoped for but is illusory or impossible to achieve.

Whoa. This reminds me of our readings that discussed how to "define" rhetoric--not as a thing in and of itself, but rather a meeting point of a variety of things, connecting, transforming, and then carrying on in new directions.

Interesting. So the very definition of a cyborg assumes that we have a stable definition of what a human is, and that humans are not constantly transforming based on outside factors. Following this logic, humans are strictly (and statically) human until they are violated by the Other. So there's kind of a human/non-human binary that is created and the cyborg is situated in the center as "half human, half machine."

A fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.

syllogism: an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common or middle term not present in the conclusion (e.g., all dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs ).

Is this still true? That is, do we still consider rhetoric to be fundamentally persuasive? Do we consider Foucault's examples of self-writing as rhetoric to be persuasive then, and if so, who is being persuaded and of what?

Perhaps then, we engage in self narrative (and maybe even all forms of personal expression) not to self-indulgently talk about ourselves, but to reach out to others.

To explain something clearly to someone else, you have to first explain it clearly to yourself (and commit it to memory).

Its interesting to me to think about instagram, twitter, tumblr as the modern hupomnemata. We use these technologies to document aspects of the self (often performatively), and in turn we tend to remember what we spend time documenting. The process of documenting also leads us to emphasize certain aspects of the self, which may in turn shape the self, for better or for worse.

The practice of severe self-discipline, typically for religious reasons.

This reminds me of Megan Boyle's liveblog, in which she posted all of the events of her life online as a way to force herself to get her life together. It didn't work, but it does speak to how public internet writing/posting (self writing) involves sharing aspects of our lives in order to construct an identity or prove something about ourselves to the outside world.

https://www.thefader.com/2018/10/02/megan-boyle-liveblog-interview

Maybe because we don't yet know all of the things that rhetoric could potentially be? Because rhetoric shape-shifts depending on context or field, the answer seems infinite.

Perhaps identity requires a fixed notion of the self; because rhetoric depends on a variety of ever-shifting factors (I think), it is constantly in flux and incapable of fixity.

And this doesn't work because good and bad themselves are rhetorical concepts (?)

From what I know about Le Guin's work, this comment isn't surprising. From her wiki page:

"Several of Le Guin's works have featured stylistic or structural features that were unusual or subversive. The heterogeneous structure of The Left Hand of Darkness, described as "distinctly post-modern", was unusual for the time of its publication] This was in marked contrast to the structure of (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#Style_and_influences

So many of us consume art in hopes of finding evidence that we are human! And often, in doing this, we seek universal truths only to discover that the universal is often assumed to be male. Telling stories, especially histories, from a strictly male viewpoint implies that there is only one way to be fully human.

Agreed, it's interesting that our default understandings of history are so male-centric. The stereotypical "caveman" has a spear, but we don't consider as much the "gatherer" aspect of hunter-gatherers, or the craftmanship of early people outside of weaponry. Maybe it is less about violent hunting stories making better stories and more about us devaluing stories about relationships, craft/art, and other aspects of humanity associated with womanhood.

Given that time was conceptualized and used differently in this period, I'm interested in how the way we think about time effects the way we understand the body and vice versa. During the prehistoric era, time was understood based on one's own internal clock, rather than the current time system we use today. With modernity, bodily anxiety increased as the polity was expected to work during specific, somewhat arbitrary hours determined by someone else. This new way of understanding time, (I think) ushered in by industrialization, totally shifted our relationship to our own bodies in that it made bodies more mechanized. From a post human standpoint, constructing time led us to reconstruct how we relate to the human body, and what we believe is "natural" for our bodies.