... One very important reason why "exorcism" is a useful description of... more ... One very important reason why "exorcism" is a useful description of Bush's recent rhetoric is because it helps us to see better the enthymematic function of "evil," and how the use of evil in ... Describing the racial Other as "evil" is a civil lesson in the intolerance of righteousness. ...
The Food Additives and Contaminants-Surveillance Database is a searchable database containing all... more The Food Additives and Contaminants-Surveillance Database is a searchable database containing all the surveillance data published in Food Additives and Contaminants Part B (FAC B) since its launch in June 2008. Search results may be viewed on screen, or ...
Drawing on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis, we argue that the film Fight Club can be unde... more Drawing on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis, we argue that the film Fight Club can be understood as a mediation of a larger, cultural psychosis. In general, psychosis represents the failure of a paternal figure to bisect the intimate relation between an infant ...
John Armitage ("Beyond Postmodernism") has given us a thorough chronology of Virilio's writings, ... more John Armitage ("Beyond Postmodernism") has given us a thorough chronology of Virilio's writings, tracing broad developments and recurring themes. While this background shares some aspects of Armitage's survey, it differs in that it identifies themes of interest to those pursuing research in rhetoric and media technology. Broadly described, Virilio's research interrogates the critical history of logics of perception molded or enabled by technology, from the printing press, the telescope, and the photograph, to film, television, and the internet, and more. Virilio's is a project that not only concerns a recognition of the internal logics and specificity of a given technology of representation, but also concerns the broadest implications of these technologies upon our collective perceptions of time and space, and the material and political consequences of these shifts. For example, the telescope does not merely let humans see farther, but also disciplines and alters our logics of perception (such as the concept of distance), and opens up new vistas for ideological colonization (e.g., the "space race"). This interest in the historical, the material, and the political aspects of media technologies places Virilio in a place unique in contemporary critical theory.
In order to help frame a current theoretical impasse, in this essay we forward the figure of the ... more In order to help frame a current theoretical impasse, in this essay we forward the figure of the zombie in Western cinema as an allegory for the reception of the concept of ideology by communication scholars. After noting parallels between (a) an early academic caricature of ideology and the laboring zombie, and (b) the subject of ideological interpellation and the ravenous, consuming zombie of more recent cinema, we suggest that rhetorical scholars have yet to move beyond an obsession with the laboring zombie. To escape the connotation of a totalizing determinism that haunts ideology critique, we urge an acceptance of the category of the unconscious and a focus on ideology as a force of subjectification.
In this essay we argue that an eschatological discourse we term the “apocalyptic sublime” has eme... more In this essay we argue that an eschatological discourse we term the “apocalyptic sublime” has emerged, as the postmodern alternative to traditional apocalyptic rhetoric. Drawing on the work of Frank Kermode and Jean Baudrillard, the essay isolates two key features of the apocalyptic sublime as (a) a reliance on non‐linear temporality and (b) a kind of destabilized subjectivity characteristic of that described in the sublime theories of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. The apocalyptic sublime is then used to explain the rhetorical dimensions ...
In this essay we argue that mass media coverage of crises has begun to adopt an emerging social f... more In this essay we argue that mass media coverage of crises has begun to adopt an emerging social form or subgenre of theological discourse that we term the “apocalyptic sublime.” The apocalyptic sublime is characterized by the forwarding of an immanent temporality without promise of relief and by the promotion of an unstable subjectivity (in this case, a disoriented spectator) that is fruitfully described as an experience of sublimity. Our exemplar is the coverage of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which has yet to fall from public ...
... Further, Lundberg argues that a critical attention to fantasies is limited to discrete texts ... more ... Further, Lundberg argues that a critical attention to fantasies is limited to discrete texts and intersubjective encounters, thereby avoiding an opportunity to do true Lacanian rhetoricalcriticism.5 Christian Lundberg, The Royal Road Not Taken: Joshua Gunn's 'Refitting Fantasy ...
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6op Oxford University Press is a depar... more OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6op Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens ...
This essay retells the history of U. S. rhetorical studies as a negotiation over the meaning of t... more This essay retells the history of U. S. rhetorical studies as a negotiation over the meaning of the concepts of invention and imagination. By providing a genealogical outline of the transformation of the imagination in rhetorical theory, a trend toward an increasingly contingent, "posthumanist" understanding of the rhetorical agent emerges, reaching its fullest elaboration in symbolic convergence theory. Instead of accepting the possibility that some rhetorical processes are primarily unconscious, however, U. S. rhetorical scholars, including Ernest Bormann, continued to defend the fully conscious, autonomous subject or elided the question of agency by advancing "ideological" and "materialist" theories focused on abstract populations, publics, or audiences. The essay concludes by urging a consideration of the "imaginary," a psychoanalytic understanding of the collective unconscious, as a concept that may help to reconcile disciplinary tensions regarding the status of the rhetorical agent.
... One very important reason why "exorcism" is a useful description of... more ... One very important reason why "exorcism" is a useful description of Bush's recent rhetoric is because it helps us to see better the enthymematic function of "evil," and how the use of evil in ... Describing the racial Other as "evil" is a civil lesson in the intolerance of righteousness. ...
The Food Additives and Contaminants-Surveillance Database is a searchable database containing all... more The Food Additives and Contaminants-Surveillance Database is a searchable database containing all the surveillance data published in Food Additives and Contaminants Part B (FAC B) since its launch in June 2008. Search results may be viewed on screen, or ...
Drawing on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis, we argue that the film Fight Club can be unde... more Drawing on the insights of Lacanian psychoanalysis, we argue that the film Fight Club can be understood as a mediation of a larger, cultural psychosis. In general, psychosis represents the failure of a paternal figure to bisect the intimate relation between an infant ...
John Armitage ("Beyond Postmodernism") has given us a thorough chronology of Virilio's writings, ... more John Armitage ("Beyond Postmodernism") has given us a thorough chronology of Virilio's writings, tracing broad developments and recurring themes. While this background shares some aspects of Armitage's survey, it differs in that it identifies themes of interest to those pursuing research in rhetoric and media technology. Broadly described, Virilio's research interrogates the critical history of logics of perception molded or enabled by technology, from the printing press, the telescope, and the photograph, to film, television, and the internet, and more. Virilio's is a project that not only concerns a recognition of the internal logics and specificity of a given technology of representation, but also concerns the broadest implications of these technologies upon our collective perceptions of time and space, and the material and political consequences of these shifts. For example, the telescope does not merely let humans see farther, but also disciplines and alters our logics of perception (such as the concept of distance), and opens up new vistas for ideological colonization (e.g., the "space race"). This interest in the historical, the material, and the political aspects of media technologies places Virilio in a place unique in contemporary critical theory.
In order to help frame a current theoretical impasse, in this essay we forward the figure of the ... more In order to help frame a current theoretical impasse, in this essay we forward the figure of the zombie in Western cinema as an allegory for the reception of the concept of ideology by communication scholars. After noting parallels between (a) an early academic caricature of ideology and the laboring zombie, and (b) the subject of ideological interpellation and the ravenous, consuming zombie of more recent cinema, we suggest that rhetorical scholars have yet to move beyond an obsession with the laboring zombie. To escape the connotation of a totalizing determinism that haunts ideology critique, we urge an acceptance of the category of the unconscious and a focus on ideology as a force of subjectification.
In this essay we argue that an eschatological discourse we term the “apocalyptic sublime” has eme... more In this essay we argue that an eschatological discourse we term the “apocalyptic sublime” has emerged, as the postmodern alternative to traditional apocalyptic rhetoric. Drawing on the work of Frank Kermode and Jean Baudrillard, the essay isolates two key features of the apocalyptic sublime as (a) a reliance on non‐linear temporality and (b) a kind of destabilized subjectivity characteristic of that described in the sublime theories of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. The apocalyptic sublime is then used to explain the rhetorical dimensions ...
In this essay we argue that mass media coverage of crises has begun to adopt an emerging social f... more In this essay we argue that mass media coverage of crises has begun to adopt an emerging social form or subgenre of theological discourse that we term the “apocalyptic sublime.” The apocalyptic sublime is characterized by the forwarding of an immanent temporality without promise of relief and by the promotion of an unstable subjectivity (in this case, a disoriented spectator) that is fruitfully described as an experience of sublimity. Our exemplar is the coverage of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which has yet to fall from public ...
... Further, Lundberg argues that a critical attention to fantasies is limited to discrete texts ... more ... Further, Lundberg argues that a critical attention to fantasies is limited to discrete texts and intersubjective encounters, thereby avoiding an opportunity to do true Lacanian rhetoricalcriticism.5 Christian Lundberg, The Royal Road Not Taken: Joshua Gunn's 'Refitting Fantasy ...
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6op Oxford University Press is a depar... more OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6op Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens ...
This essay retells the history of U. S. rhetorical studies as a negotiation over the meaning of t... more This essay retells the history of U. S. rhetorical studies as a negotiation over the meaning of the concepts of invention and imagination. By providing a genealogical outline of the transformation of the imagination in rhetorical theory, a trend toward an increasingly contingent, "posthumanist" understanding of the rhetorical agent emerges, reaching its fullest elaboration in symbolic convergence theory. Instead of accepting the possibility that some rhetorical processes are primarily unconscious, however, U. S. rhetorical scholars, including Ernest Bormann, continued to defend the fully conscious, autonomous subject or elided the question of agency by advancing "ideological" and "materialist" theories focused on abstract populations, publics, or audiences. The essay concludes by urging a consideration of the "imaginary," a psychoanalytic understanding of the collective unconscious, as a concept that may help to reconcile disciplinary tensions regarding the status of the rhetorical agent.
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