And both have a key connection to Satan, Prince of Lies.

Though not in the Burke we read, he does make a point that between Cicero and Augustine, there's a meaningful shift in Rhetoric from "to move" (movere) to "to bend" (flectere). Muckelbauer adding the Presocratic "to turn" makes for an interesting track between the three. Turning and bending both leave the subject in the same "place," but a bent subject is changed while a turned one pivots. Although, I am also open to the possibility that translation from Ancient Greek and Latin to English might be leading me down a less-than-useful path.

I feel that this is the significant turn from last week's readings. Continuing from attempts from Biesecker et al. to disrupt the rhetor-opponent-audience triangle, posthuman rhetoric is looking beyond the exclusively human dynamics of that triangle.

Rhetoric is not just the ability to argue a point, but to identify the point you wish to argue in the first place.

Effectively, we never stop doing rhetoric, and rhetoric never stops being done to us. With the prior note, our personal identity, rather than being a remove by which we can judge these rhetorical influences, is made up by these contrasting and deflecting influences.

"Are you master of the situation? 'He that ruleth his spirit is better than he who taketh a city.' Now is your chance for mastery."

More fire imagery. Big in Christianity, but also a good metaphor for how rhetoric lets passionate fervor pass from the speaker to the audience.

Plus, since I'm already thinking of Spike Lee joints, the intense heat of Do the Right Thing and the sense that eventually injustice will boil over into explosive force is a vivid image.

I do like the imagery of fire for Rhetoric and oration: it transforms, it acts on things without having it's own materiality (using a more classical model of the world that doesn't include plasma), and, like language, our mastery of it is what separates us from animals.

Adding this to my #WhatIsRhetoric

A thing for us to look forward to for next week, but I am unironically hype to learn more about this idea. There's all sorts of resonances this is already setting off with me--I'm thinking in terms of credit scores, twitter follower counts, and other mathematical means to codify the level of influence/respectability, it seems like there are some interesting connections down that way.

This sentence might be a good phrase to fit into a "What is Rhetoric" question. The rest of the paragraph also goes on to exhort the collective and collaborative nature of knowledge, which is a perspective that favors the value of Rhetoric.

Good note for the "what is Rhetoric?" discussion. The "common opinion" attitude is important in the context of Vico's earlier point on the court rhetorician. Ornateness and common sense don't seem like words that normally fit together, but the key word is "appropriate." There's no iron rule for appropriateness that can be discerned philosophically, you have to engage your audience on their understanding.