tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891233110443244524.post7367213874905517370..comments2023-12-27T11:20:48.912-06:00Comments on An Un-canny Ontology: Rhetorical Scene and OnticologyNathan Galehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04326939633169223993noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891233110443244524.post-13390272175059607822010-07-31T14:12:05.248-05:002010-07-31T14:12:05.248-05:00Hey Levi,
No, I completely agree with you as far ...Hey Levi,<br /><br />No, I completely agree with you as far as Burke's notion of container and contained. I've tried to stay away from this type of language and perhaps need to better formulate the points of divergence between my view and Burke's.<br /><br />As for your second point, I'm not sure where you see me making the distinction between the rhetor and other agents, or favoring the rhetor as human. Instead, I was pointing us away from this distinction in the hopes of re-thinking rhetoric (in which such a distinction is extremely prevalent) as filled with agents. As you saw with your example of your daughter and the toy box, who's to say which object is the rhetor and which the audience? I read it one way (where she translated the encounter into a yell), you meant it in another way (where the box went on its merry way - although I'm sure there was some energy passed from the encounter that caused the box to shift, if ever so slightly). The point is, that once we start singling out entities - even as examples - it becomes difficult to maintain full agency. This is a problem I am only now working on. The scene qua agent, I believe, offers us a way to work around this problem.<br /><br />These are just a few rough outlines of where I'm going in my own thought. So thanks again for your invaluable input.Nathan Galehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04326939633169223993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891233110443244524.post-77292573557071571422010-07-31T13:50:36.522-05:002010-07-31T13:50:36.522-05:00I should add that the key point is that regimes of...I should add that the key point is that regimes of attraction are not something <em>other</em> than agents, but are themselves agents. Morton makes this point nicely in <em>The Ecological Thought</em>. We often tend to speak of the environment as a container that things must then adapt to. As such, we create an ontological distinction between objects on the one hand and environments on the other. Morton's argument is that the environment itself is nothing but other actors.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891233110443244524.post-40503013395355713612010-07-31T13:48:43.647-05:002010-07-31T13:48:43.647-05:00Hey Nate,
Great stuff here. I think I find the l...Hey Nate,<br /><br />Great stuff here. I think I find the language of scene objectionable because one of the things I'm trying to get around is a treatment of these relations in terms of the container and the contained. This is where I would worry about Burke's thesis that the action of agents is always harmonious with its scene. Here I think Don Quixote is a good counter-example. Quixote is a crystal of time, a crystal of the past, existing out of sync with the scene (in the more conventional sense) in which he finds himself. In my view, these temporal structures are particular important in our own contemporary moment, as our world is populated by the simultaneity of different historical temporalities entering into conflict with one another, e.g. the Amish in the contemporary world, technologically illiterate elders, third world countries still existing in the middle ages, and so on.<br /><br />I notice that you distinguish between the rhetor and other agents. Is the rhetor always human? One idea that's recently fascinated me is that of nonhuman rhetors. In what way can a nonhuman "speak"? Does it even make sense to think of nonhumans speak? Initially this idea is preposterous. "Only humans speak!" we declare with outrage. But is that really true? Think about the relationship between representatives and the represented. The represented seldom speak directly, but rather only speak through the prosthesis of their representative, not unlike the spacing guild representative that can only speak through a bizarre special microphone. How is this any different than an object speaking through a technological device like a tectonic plate surprising us by causing lines to jump on a piece of paper. Here, again, I think Latour is indispensable. This is precisely his argument in <em>We Have Never Been Modern</em> and one of the central reasons that he treats nonhumans as full-blown actors. By registering their speech through technological devices, nonhuman actors have the power to overturn entire research programs and destroy careers. In these cases, media, far from being extensions of man, use humans as prostheses for <em>themselves</em>!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com