Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal. Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor.
Why is this? Historically, socially? How do we perpetuate it everyday? What can we do about it?
Rather than uniting to face the real foe—do-nothing politicians, legislators, and others in power—we fall into the trap of turning against each other, expending our energy battling our allies instead of our enemies.
Is there any way to change this? What does it say about who holds the power of rhetoric in this country?
If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.
strong pathos
it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long.
This is especially relevant with the election going on right now.
“Stealing a Bag of Potato Chips and Other Crimes of Resistance.”
Exploring the rhetoric of defiance in a society of oppression
visual images and visual thinking
Visuals embody ideas and allow for different directions to be explored, "opens directions for you rather than narrowing them."
wrote and drew
Different interaction with information through handwriting and drawing rather than typing; activates different brain regions internalizing information through the use of fine motor skills; perhaps enables more cohesive presentation?
wrote and drew his dissertation entirely in comic book form
like Humphrey. A way to expand academic argument to broader audience, challenges academia, "bridge between public and academic discourse"
into teaching, learning and creativity
Ability to communicate complex ideas through nontraditional discourse via multiple tools such as varying modes, layers, open space, etc.
Relates to Bogost- society is complex ideas and the need to interact with those, and Humphrey-"spatio-topia" and challenge to authority through language and presentation
"For Beginners" and "Introducing" series of "graphic guides," which use images, text, and comics to summarise the work of major philosophers – in this case Derrida and Foucault.
Makes me think of Bogost, perhaps a way to share a complex idea/argument to a larger audience.
how few women appear in this paper
Traditionally women haven't been thought of as part of the general comic audience, much as they were left out of academic discourse. Again a power structure presented through discourse.
earlier forms
Interesting that he starts with comics from the 1970s and continues into the 1990s, before comics were being used in the classroom (as far as I know- it seems like a recent shift to me).
cut down the number of words I had to use dramatically
Images were able to "speak" for him
I wrote the text by hand
Studies show that handwriting activates areas of the brain that typing does not.
multimodal forms as essentially invisible
Relate to Hock's "Transparency"
pushing at the boundaries of what published research can be
Breaking with traditional form by presenting ideas in form of comic
discourse traditionally has taken the form
Interesting point about the globalization of academic writing, the expectations or assumed expectations of how ideas are presented. The academic power structure.
This is a comic that analyses other comics,
Adopting the form that is being critiqued. Literally showing the strengths and weaknesses through his own composition, rather than just writing about them.
challenge the conception of an authoritative author’s "voice," as is typically found in traditional educational and academic writing.
Does it challenge the definition of a writer's authority, or does it question it, causing us to pause and examine how that authority is still present but presented differently?
Procedural Rhetoric
Using games to enhance learning through interaction for better understanding of complex information and ideas
a difference in discourse
These were the words Bogost used when stating what he hoped could be achieved in society. It believes that our discourse is too simple and that it doesn't reflect the complexities of life. A more complex discourse would bring authenticity and would expand what we were able to talk about and understand. It would create a discourse of difference.
Tenure
This game sounds awesome. Whoever thought of a game of politics and real scenarios?! Why are education majors not playing this today?
procedural rhetoric
Boost calls "design philosophy"
The ideas and processes behind the design. This could therefore apply to all rhetoric, could it not?
procedural rhetoric
I like the idea of rhetoric of process. In my classes, we talk so much about how rhetoric is a process, but somehow the focus still falls on the final product. This helps to shift that thinking. I know it specifically entails computers, since as Bogost says, "computers are model making machines," but he also says that it can be applied to other media.
Empowerment and the agency of audiences has been a contested aspect of digital media.
Connection to Reeves' idea of structured flow
For example, José van Dijck challenges the idea that online platforms like YouTube signal any shift in media power because they mine the metadata of users in order to target advertising to individuals
Not a shift in who has power, just in how they use/maintain it
can limit their exposure to different kinds of programmes and different perspectives
"echo chamber" in Reeves' flow
It enables us to not only to consider current television formations, but to contemplate how these connect and relate to past formations, and possible future formations.
The assemblages, all the possibilities- this is what we had, this is what we have, and what will we get?
The years of stability that Uricchio refers to could be understood as precisely a set of links that reinforce particular arrangements and by doing so block other possibilities. However, digital technology has enabled new links to form that open up the television assemblage to new forms of production and new forms of engagement.
Interesting use of the word "links" here. Are there underlying connotations?
beckons viewers to become engaged and to become players rather than passive viewers.
interactive media rather than the "lazy viewer"
This means taking into account that children are not tied to temporal modes of viewing based on schedules and other expectations to do with broadcast television such as high production standards and established genres.
What does this mean for the future of television?
what is lost in this new formation?
We move "forward" but at what costs? Privacy? Interaction?
If we think about these components as simply the actualisation of a number of possible virtulalities, then it becomes apparent that their actualisation is contingent on a variety of tendencies coming together and not the result of a linear logic.
No linear logic involved? Well what then of math problems and science experiments that lead to possibilities (virtulalities) and realizations (actualisations). Those seem like linear logic paths to me...
the actual is always informed and influenced by the virtual and that, while the virtual may have an infinite number of possibilities, only some are actualised
The possibilities versus what becomes reality. The infinite versus the finite.
Firstly, agency cannot be attributed to any one component or actant, human or non-human but emerges from the association of different parts.
The various sums of parts change and create change not necessarily the parts themselves. Like a person involved in a social or political movement. The person adds to the movement and is a part of it, but it is the movement that affects change.
as the nature of the system changes, its capacities or what it enables, also change. DeLanda discusses this process in terms of emergent properties.
Ripple effect. If one think changes it is bound to affect other things, even if they are not obvious.
First, because assemblages form new connections with the outside, the social itself becomes open to change.
Disruptions enter and question why things are the way they are and how they could change, this is very obvious in technology and business, subtle at social level.
the concept of assemblages provides a means of accounting for the formation of new kinds of connections between discrete devices, texts and applications, at times across different mediums. It enables us to think about how previous and current devices, texts and medium are reconfigured and adopt new functionalities or are modified, so as to display new qualities.
The potential possibilities, by taking the pieces and rearranging them, taking some out, and adding in some new we create new things.
change and transformation are not simply ‘characteristics of the medium’s current phase but more generally [are] one of television’s integral features’
the transformative nature of television. While we think of it as the one thing in our living rooms, tv is really a conglomerate (aka collection of appendages)
Internet TV
Combining two forms of media onto one device
Not only does online HCI reproduce media consumption habits, butit also facilitates insulated exposure to recurrent content.8
While you can access all kinds of information online, you can also get stuck in cycles of the same information relating only to people who feel/think/believe the way you do, which prohibits dialogue and growth. This can reinforce who you think you are or your view of the world, but it is prohibitive to evolution.
On the Web “thepossible” that is conjured is often a possible self
The embodiment of what is presented, what you present and what is presented to you can in some way define who you are
“peripheral” content
All the stuff around the edges of the page
a textual environment in whichcertain elements are privileged over their unlinked or uneditable counterparts—that defines the potential excursions of its “liberated” audience.
What about the things that aren't linked? Are there no links for a reason? What is being left out of the conversation?
the obvious fact that audiences can disobey theserhetorical biases
Don't have to click the link. How does that alter how you interact with the text or what information you get from it though?
dynamis(potentiality), defining it as “the art which seeksto capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggestthat which is possible”
Sounds like kairos
like living experience in general, as “constituting the transition ofthe continuum, and not as pieces present alongside one another each for itself”
Life- individual experiences formed from prior experiences influenced by emotion and perception, equating to a "whole" life
Compositions- individual ideas and examples informed by prior knowledge, equating to a "whole" piece influenced by emotions, experiences, and perception
There is nothing at all “random” about Web audiencing
purposefully placed for specific reasons
“the readers’ ability to select a con-nection may give them a false sense of power over the text: links are put thereby people, and are fully as significant and potentially as manipulative as othertextual means”
Ah, a false sense of power or limited power at least for the audience, and perhaps a returning of power to the composer simply by acknowledging placement and organization as key to argument presentation.
the autonomy of thedigital audience has been frequently overestimated
I think I am doing this with my portfolio, trying to control the flow, and assuming that I need to because my audience will willfully disregard linear reading conventions.
Web audiencing isgoverned by flows through which the organizing logics of more traditional texts—such as coherence of theme and momentum of access—are remediated into theWeb experience, just as they were remediated from print media into relativelyfragmented television broadcasting
It's the same thing, just re-purposed to fit new needs. Traditional techniques fused with technology. What would Socrates (via Plato) have to say about this?
digital textualityhas given twenty-first-century audiences an unprecedented role in sequencing andeven producing the texts they consume
empowering the audience with choice in a way it has never had
confronted with alluring options that have beencarefully constructed by designers and/or generated automatically based uponusers’ past activity profiles
How do the ethics invloved in rhetoric translate to this modern gathering and use of information collection?
personalize each page that a user accesses,tempting users with advertisements and customized links based upon a cookie-generated profile of his or her estimated interests
I bet TV wishes it could do this, play commercials directly to who is watching. They try but it is not specific like the Internet. How does this influence how people interact and respond to what it presented them? How does this change they way it is presented? Is this ethical?
Bouncing from onesite, profile, or activity to the next, users routinely find themselves in unexpectedplaces, spending much more time on the Web than they had initially planned.
Universal these days?
Writers produceshows that are easily dividable into acts; between these acts commercials pull theviewer deeper into the streaming flow of content, their interruptive potential soft-ened by the adoption of familiar or provocative themes, voices, or products.
I've noticed more and more ads creeping into spaces between paragraphs in online article- like commercials in between acts. The translation of one use of media into another. But how do we react to ads in text versus ads in shows and movies? Does it distract us or hook us in the same ways?
For Williams flow unifies and organizes discrete yet related textual units intoa coherent sequence.
Not just the sum, but the parts. This seems to equate traditional rhetorical study with contemporary- acknowledging the various pieces and the process, not just the final product
Williams’s notion of flow is characterized byfragmentation and discontinuity, elements that make flow especially suitable forthe analysis of online HCI. Fiske explains that “flow, with its connotations of alanguid river, is perhaps an unfortunate metaphor: the movement of the televisiontext is discontinuous, interrupted, and segmented” (231)—not unlike, I might add,the media experience encouraged by the World Wide Web. Keeping this in mind,there is value in developing a cautious and realistic revision of Williams’s classicconcept, highlighting its emphasis on a medium’s loose yet persistent grip on theaudience.
Viewing flow in this manner changes the way I think about it. I was relating a flow to a sum (the river), rather I can look at it as the parts and how those parts interact and relate to one another.
structured flows.
How can you meaningfully or purposefully structure the flow to move your audience in a specific direction or flow? In traditional texts a linear flow occurred but now with multimodality, how as a composer can you still have that control over your work?
While this liberation of the audienceis an important aspect of the digital experience, the Web nevertheless confrontsus with a highly structured rhetorical environment
Audience feels more in control of how they view things and what it is they view, more choice, more freedom. But is this just on the surface, is it just an illusion? How much control does an audience really have? Which leads to questions about how much control an author/composer has the piece and how the audience interacts with it?
To analyze the Web through a rhetorical lens, rhetoricians have modified theirtraditional theories of the spoken and printed word to accommodate digital textsthat are bustling with video, still and moving images, sound, and the pervasivetemptations of hyperlinks.
Shift from traditional printed texts to mulitmodal texts.
the stories all ignore the woman’s personal agency
Each story is about the good of someone "normal" and not at all about the person who is "disabled"
Who controls the rhetoric of these stories? And why are they presented the way they are? For what purpose?
Instead, all we get is the hero quarterback
A tried and true tale we've been hearing since the 1950s. But whose tale is it? Who does it really represent?
exploring the various ways that disabled people were used to make other folks think mostly of themselves
I have never thought about it this way before. Interactions with people who are disabled, first usually put me in awe, but second make me thankful that I have the health and ability that I do. This completely shifts the focus from them back to me. Why is this? Why can't the thought or action following this interaction stay with them? I will always be conscious of this now, and will strive to not do it.
an officer would humiliate one of the boys, and the boy would respond by not cooperating or by cursing back
In the face of humiliation, of course there is going to be push back?<br> This just adds to the need or desire for defiance.
Many of the boys in this study often maintained their distance in the candy or soda aisles at stores to show they were not attempting to steal.
This empty, purposeful space represents the imposed and internalized rhetoric of our society and how individuals (these boys specifically) attempt to live with it.
Still, Ronny, like many of the other boys, preferred to take on the risk of incarceration and the low wages that this under-ground entrepreneurship granted him in order to avoid the stigma, shame, and feeling of failure that the job-application process produced for him. Misrecognition of genuine attempts to do well in school, the labor market, or their probation pro-gram led to frustration—and to producing alternatives in which the boys’ organic capital could be put to productive use.
How does that define us as society, not giving people an opportunity and a fair chance? Instead they have to use their valuable skills in a way that threatens their freedom. How do the messages sent and received (the rhetoric of society) perpetuate this?
“Because professionals wear them.”
we emulate the role models we are exposed to and can relate to
“The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race”
Strong call to action and pathos. Lots of statistics to back up points. Good one to read.
Children’s Books
children are the future, and where we move as a country will be determined by what we invest in and teach our children
The contributions continue on Twitter.
At first, prompted. Now, it grows on its own. How is it that things online seem to take on a life of their own?
And for the children of Ferguson, who have yet to have their first day, they may remember the smell of death, the odor of tear gas, the stench of an American tragedy.
How our lives and society shape our memories and our education. We do not only learn inside a classroom, and what happens outside the school building directly affects what happens within it.
By teaching students to access the multiple textures of human experience, they learn to see, hear, or feel more deeply than they could before.
teaching the whole person
Language communicates emotion
All communication is subjective. Pathos is everywhere
communicated not only with their words in formal written essays, but also with the power of visual and spatial metaphors expressed through nonverbal modes.
multimodal composition
If play is so valuable
There is a lot of talk about how play is imperative to young children's education and social skills. Why wouldn't it be important for adults as well?
embodied classroom interface
teacher now embodies knowledge rather than merely representing it
The skit itself is a parody of the hearing classroom, in which the teacher delivers an oral/aural lecture, while the students express their dissatisfaction through physical mini-aggressions with their spitballs.
Her father essentially told her that her teaching style (and traditional education in general) was lacking
nonverbal, gestural, and imagined
other contexts of rhetoric?
As a Coda
Author's ethos- paragraph that establishes credibility
that deafness is something that is gained
A gain through a loss? But then was something lost to begin with? Are those who can hear then ones at a disadvantage in some way?
The human body communicates far beyond words, yet its expressive art and multisensory experiences are being abandoned for the seemingly better technologies of language-driven social media and online learning.
Relate to Socrates disdain of the written word
these technologies are limited by linguistic expression, digital access, and data collection
discrimination within education
human technologies
Often technology is thought to be disconnected from humanity- usurping of human work and argued at times as a means of separation. Here people are the technology. Interesting.
These disruptions need to be powerful, bolstered by a digital presence and crafted with a rhetoric of awareness, activism, and engagement. A disruptive rhetoric must unify power and action from preexisting avenues and harness the rhetorical power of digital visibility.
Adapting the canons of rhetoric to the internet. How do audience and arrangement come in to play? How are they different? How are they the same?
the waves in which we frame feminist history should follow the model of radio waves
spreading through the air rather than subject to ebb and flow
Hashtags as rhetorical interventions are visually powerful, working to categorize language for readers and immediately position this language within a larger visual body of work when searched for or curated in online spaces
Modern rhetorical invention. What would Plato or Aristotle have thought about hashtags?
After all, the online abuse that Beard herself experienced threatened to “rip out her tongue,” to remove the organ that allows her to verbally enact rhetoric as a woman.
Have we not progressed at all?
She sought an alternative avenue to invention; her available means included an intervention of stereotypical “women’s work” that served to speak for her.
Finding a means of speech even when it has been denied.
we must build from these scholars’ work and consider how contemporary feminist rhetoric might be bolstered, enhanced, and girded against erasure—specifically in the realm of digital writing and social media.
Take the lessons of the past and connect them to today so that we can move forward
A system “socially agreed upon” by the existing power structures is problematic in who is “agreeing” upon these terms—largely male politicians.
Still an issue with a majority male government
Greek society was male-centric, as reflected in some of the most famous dialogues from the era.
Even when Socrates speaks of lovers, they are male. Phaedrus
The Sophistic movement, for example, was rooted in teaching commoners and those outside of the realm of traditional education how to speak and defend themselves in courts of law
But in Athens the Sophists were looked down upon, labeled manipulators and liars.
The Greco-Roman tradition valued masculinity and class over all else, resulting in a centuries-long structure of authorial and oratorical expectations. To write or speak publicly, one must meet these criteria.
The context of Phaedrus.
“how might contemporary feminist scholars, historians, and digital citizens use the complicated history behind us to propel a sustainable feminist rhetoric into the future?”
Is she presenting her argument in the form of a question?
feminist rhetoric of intervention (her calm, impactful question caught on digital live stream) to subvert a traditionally regimented forum, enabling her to reach a wide audience that would have normally been relegated to just those within a congressional chamber.
Invention, one of the canons of rhetoric
When only words remain
think about Socrates argument on the written word from Phaedrus
Intersectional issues that we carry into digital spheres color each interaction, for better or worse. The cultural structure of online worlds are reflected and recycled from our in-person interfaces,
true
Feminist rhetoric is advancing feminisms online— a distinction that is important to make from “women’s rhetoric,” which is restricted to only women and does not capture the experience of feminist activists that might identify differently.
Clearly defining the terms
the Greek roots of rhetoric, asserting, “‘the word rhetoric can be traced back ultimately to the simple assertion I say (eiro in Greek)
Connecting past to present in rhetoric
Firstly, I define feminist rhetoric as any written or spoken act about feminisms
Define your terms first for clarity, then proceed into argument.
women have been relegated to the background of public speech or silenced altogether by a patriarchal structure of discourse.
Aspasia
thirteen-hour filibuster
speech, rhetorics origin
But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.
Plato!
this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves
resemblance to our reliance on phones and computers
rhetorician has; no need of truth
perception of Sophists
he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls-they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man
know your audience
What power has this art of rhetoric, and when?
link to feminism reading
All of them agree in asserting that a speech should end in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word. Phaedr. You mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them.
conclusion
rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts
delivery
There is the exordium, showing how the speech should begin, if I remember rightly; that is what you mean-the niceties of the art? Phaedr. Yes. Soc. Then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses; thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great Byzantian word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation and further confirmation.
arrangement
our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.
Socrates discussing the merits of defining terms in the beginning before moving forward
Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right, and equally to be esteemed-that is what you have heard?
Socrates defining rhetoric
perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer:
rhetoric in female form
And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth.
manipulation rather than rhetoric?
Why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approvers?
Politics seems not to have changed much...
you are aware that the greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called Sophists by posterity
"Sophists" used as an insult
I divided each soul into three-two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad:
The internal struggle of good and bad
Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship.
Love is different to each, defined by whom we are.
And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wings begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul-for once the whole was winged.
True love can help one regrow his/her wings which help them see and learn from the gods.
True love essentially - uplifts.
And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.
The mixing of madness and sanity; the madman sees clearly.
This seems a very high opinion of the philosopher.
The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away.
Isn't this love?
There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names, who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;-they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion.
Comparing the difference between madness and prophecy with non-lover and lover, understanding how the terms are alike and also different. Again defining before moving forward
what an utter want of delicacy was shown in the two discourses
female traits attributed to rhetoric (see feminist reading)
first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love
clearly define the terms so that all involved are in understanding before continuing with the argument
arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention
2 of 5 rhetorical canons- Arrangment and invention
commonplaces
topics
promise to make another and better oration, equal in length and entirely new, on the same subject
the challenge
I could make another speech as good as that of Lysias, and different
Is Socrates contending for the title of great rhetorician?
Sappho the fair
Sappho, female poet and rhetor
Ancient sages, men and women, who have spoken and written of these things, would rise up in judgment against me, if out of complaisance I assented to you.
acknowledging women as rhetors
he repeated himself two or three times, either from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing in two or three ways.
what Socrates finds wrong in Lysias' text
there are many more non-lovers than lovers; and if you choose the best of the lovers, you will not have many to choose from; but if from the non-lovers, the choice will be larger
A bigger pool to choose from, but not necessarily a better one.
lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown when their passion ceases, but to the non-lovers who are free and not under any compulsion, no time of repentance ever comes; for they confer their benefits according to the measure of their ability, in the way which is most conducive to their own interest.
still true in relationships today
Soc.
Socrates continually calls Phaedrus out, just tell the truth Phaedrus and stop fooling around.
Will you go on?
Enough already Socrates; do you want to hear about it or not?
the greatest rhetorician of the age
Phaedrus calls Lysias "the greatest rhetorician of the age" while speaking to Socrates. Interesting.
what an utter want of delicacy was shown in the two discourses
female traits attributed to rhetoric (see feminist reading)
Lynda.com
This is a great resource.
Here is the course outline for English 4320 at Georgia State University. Included are the project outlines, weekly expectations, grading standards, and the submission form for Spring semester. Pay close attention to due dates and instructions.