UCI Rhetoric

Rhetoric Reading Group 2016-2017

The theme for AY 2016-2017 is Global Currents: Circulation and Materiality. Over the last decade or so, spurred by technological advancements and global economic and cultural fluctuations, Laurie Gries, Jim Ridolfo, and Rebecca Dingo, among others, have contributed to the emergence of circulation studies, or what Gries describes as “an interdisciplinary approach to studying discourse in motion.” Circulation encourages us to think about researching and teaching amidst new media ecologies (Gries), while also permitting us to reframe ancient rhetorical concepts such as delivery (Ridolfo) and to consider objects of study operating across vast spatiotemporal scales such as transnational feminism (Dingo). The theme, we hope, will allow us to explore how writing and rhetoric move in the world and how we, as teacher-scholars, can attune our pedagogies and methodologies to such phenomena.

We had our first reading group meeting on October 19th. We started the year with a foundational text in circulation studies and we supplemented it with some related theory:

  • Laurie Gries, “Iconographic Tracking: A Digital Research Method for Visual Rhetoric and Circulation Studies”
  • Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik, or How to Make Things Public”

We opened our discussion by explicating some of the theoretical intricacies of Latour. Many of us found Latour’s manifesto-like piece to be both stylishly written and provocatively organized, and we were interested in figuring out how and why Latour is such an important touchstone for object-oriented and ecological approaches in rhetorical studies. This led us to consider the theoretical underpinnings of Gries’ layered methodology for tracking the circulation and repurposing of viral images. As we contemplated the stakes of such a methodology, we also noted how accumulating vast troves of data requires even more scrutiny of the tools that a researcher uses.

Our second meeting took place on February 27th. On this date, we hosted Laurie Gries at UCI. She visited our reading group and then gave a public lecture. More information about her lecture, titled “Doing Transnational Circulation Studies in a Digital Age,” can be found here. As for the reading group, continuing our focus on the theoretical and methodological implications of circulation, we read the following:

  • Jane Bennett, “The Agency of Assemblages” (chapter two from Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things)
  • Laurie Gries, “Agential Matters” (chapter three from Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics)
  • Optional reading: Gries, “Obama Hope, Fair Use, and Copyright” (chapter seven from Still Life with Rhetoric)

We spent much of our time discussing the intricacies of agency. Prompted by the grammatical constructions that Gries uses to describe the circulation of Obama Hope, we considered how language can be a means of enacting and reaffirming theoretical commitments. But we also noted how grammar can potentially obfuscate the relationships that scholars are trying to uncover. As for the notion of distributed agency to which both Bennett and Gries subscribe, some of us were uncomfortable with this because we felt it sidestepped questions of intentionality and responsibility. However, following a close reading of the concluding paragraphs from the Bennett excerpt, some of us countered that distributed agency actually enhances our ability to apportion responsibility to the human and non-human actants within a given ecology.

We held our spring meeting on April 20th to discuss an intriguing set of texts:

  • Benedict de Spinoza, excerpt from “Of the Origin and Nature of the Affects” (from Edwin Curley’s translation of the Ethics)
  • Gilles Deleuze, “Life of Spinoza” and “On the Difference between The Ethics and a Morality” (chapters one and two from Spinoza: Practical Philosophy)
  • Casey Boyle, “Writing and Rhetoric and/as Posthuman Practice”

Prompted by references to Spinoza in our previous readings, we tackled the early modern philosopher’s Ethics to get a better sense of why Spinoza is often referenced in contemporary scholarship on new materialism and rhetorical ecologies. Importantly, though, many of these references are gleaned secondhand from Deleuze. So, following that path, we appreciated how Deleuze’s book contextualized and explicated Spinoza’s philosophy. While many of us were intrigued with the Ethics, we agreed that we would need to read more deeply to figure out how Spinoza and what Deleuze calls Spinoza’s “speculative affirmation” can supplement rhetorical studies. To this point, we puzzled over the connections between new materialism and affect studies. Finally, with regards to Boyle’s recent article, we considered how the posthuman turn is and is not working towards productive pedagogical ends.