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.

Cf. Muckelbauer's Future of Invention, where the Model is an entity to be represented and representations are Copies or Simulacra.

Muckelbauer points out that a Copy, while true (or truer) to the Model to a certain extent, does less than a Simulacrum, which is just 'off' enough from the Model to have a distinct existence, to function in a different way. When Barad (a few lines below) questions whether these representations function accurately, she's questioning the purpose of the Copy, where its only role is to emulate the original. To me, it seems that an inaccurate representation might prove more interesting, to take on life of its own, separate from the Model.

Muckelbauer has a whole riff on nomads, traveling, and sophists in Future of Invention that resonates here and also above when Braidotti was talking about affirmation, negativity, and binaries.

For Muckelbauer, traveling and repetition are central to discovery (even if the travel is over the same ground). I particularly like when he says, "we cannot know what a sophist is before setting out" (86)--and that lack of knowing makes the search more difficult because how will one know the sophist when one encounters him or her? Repetition is even more important as one must continue searching even after one has found a sophist, if for nothing else to make sure it was really a sophist.

Cf. Muckelbauer's Future of Invention, where the Model is an entity to be represented and representations are Copies or Simulacra.

Muckelbauer points out that a Copy, while true (or truer) to the Model to a certain extent, does less than a Simulacrum, which is just 'off' enough from the Model to have a distinct existence, to function in a different way. When Barad (a few lines below) questions whether these representations function accurately, she's questioning the purpose of the Copy, where its only role is to emulate the original. To me, it seems that an inaccurate representation might prove more interesting, to take on life of its own, separate from the Model.

Cf. Muckelbauer and Hawhee's discussion, where "humans, animals, and machines [are linked] so intimately that it makes very little sense to attempt to distinguish among these three categories" (767)

As does Muckelbauer in Future of Invention, where one must be on the lookout for resemblances, dangerous because it is "difficult to tell them [resemblances] apart" from the things they resemble--the "two different things exist, two different and discrete identities, which blend with each other" (89). Of those resemblances, some are 'true'/faithful copies while others are "resemblance-effects," simulacra (88-90).

What I felt was interesting about Muckelbauer's examination is that he ultimately seems to say that the Simulacrum is the more compelling of the two (Copy vs Simulacrum) as it does more than the copy. Instead of existing only as imitation (as the Copy does), the Simulacrum has an existence which exceeds that.

'Simple' repetition is one way to look at it, but Muckelbauer's Future of Invention provides an entirely different take on the value of repetition, of reproducing. Though both Quintilian and Erasmus return to similar ground again and again, they and the layout of the land are not precisely as they were before.

Muckelbauer

Did we see a retracing in Latour as well, or was that simply Sherlock's Web?

This harkens back to both Muckelbauer and Rickert for me, also thinking about Burke's rhetoric as a kind of social and historical "bundle" à la Hume.

"There is no end." Another useful way to think through rhetoric in light of Muckelbauer.

But, of course, there are often temporary ends achieved.

In other words, even if rhetoric is the art of never finally answering the question, "What is rhetoric?" this art would necessarily include all attempts to finally answer that question.