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My current research interests include various areas of rhetoric and composition / writing studies (broadly construed), especially regarding the following:
This scholarly collection, which I co-edited with Sidney I. Dobrin, combines my interests in rhetoric and composition, new media, visual rhetoric, and environmental studies within an interdisciplinary and international work. This book offers different theories about how nature becomes coded in various visual representations and the implications of those representations for natural environments, human and nonhuman relationships, and the very idea of "nature." These theories provide a conversation through which to consider the rhetorical implications for composing nature though images. The Monkey's T@il Deleuze and Guattari indicate that the formal feature of language that best represents the way that desiring-machines connect is the "and." The and provides a way toward linking machines together, to move from break to break in various flows. However, as an image this is best presented by the character @, also known as the "monkey tail." In the digital internet, the @ provides one of the many points of connection for making delivery-machines. It is not just that the @ serves as the link between sender-receiver, between the recipient and the conduits (AOL, GMAIL, etc.) making such a connection possible, but that it provides the conductor of desire itself, as if it were the indefinite article. This kind of linking, with the "at" as an "and," not only provides a way of connecting, but also one with a vector, providing a line of flight. We might say the @ gives direction with purpose, if purpose can be taken to mean the striving toward a particular desire. Lacan tells us that the desire expressed by the objet petit a, from where the @ ultimately derives, can never be reached. However, the @ also derives from accounting, and means "at the rate of." This origin, of course, refers to money, and so fits nicely with Deleuze and Guattari's theories of how capitalism affects the schizophrenic. But we can also use the @ to indicate the rate at which the machines work, which, as Ulmer suggests as a speed for thinking within electracy, needs to be the speed of light. Thus, delivery with the @ needs to occur instantaneously. SEO Project If the Internet is to become a "5th Estate" and serve as a distributed system for practical reason, then the EmerAgency, or other consulting agencies that wish to spread prudence, must be able to reliably reach those who seek its knowledge. The chief database selection method for such knowledge is through search engines, such as Google. This Search Engine Optimization (SEO) project attempts to test and improve upon designing Web oracles for reaching their intended (or unintended) audiences. Writing for audiences on the Web, then, inevitably means writing for the spiders that deliver results to the audience on behalf of the author. Good Vibrations Derrida explains that one of the moves toward an applied grammatology is a move away from the objective senses and toward the chemical senses. Aesthetics are usually not determined by the traditional scientific senses of sight, hearing, and touch, but by smell and taste. However, while the general theory of smell was once one based upon the shape of the molecule, and how it "fits" within the nose, Luca Turin has advanced a theory that we smell based upon a molecule's vibrations. So it seems that hearing, sight, and scent all operate upon the same basic mechanism, and there is really no difference between the three. The trick for developing an image logic is learning to taste with our eyes by tapping into this shared mechanism. Digital Nature If the new individual identity is the brand, then to what extent do animals need branding (many of which are, of course, already branded). What effects does the shift from literacy into electracy have on nonhuman and posthuman subjects, many of whom may unwillingly partake in the writing/branding process but have little to no control on what may actually be communicated/transmitted. We need to theorize the production of "nature" within new media, and the implications this move has for what we typically consider the physical environment. A point of departure for this work comes from Heidegger, who notes in Introduction to Metaphysics the originary moment of literacy, when notable Ancient Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle began to develop a category system based on essences. In creating such a metaphysics, they necessarily exclude the accident, or as Heidegger might say, the poetic. Such a move by the Greeks closes off an entirely different way of being, and locked how we typically understand nature in the scientific mode of logic (or simply, a literate mode of logic). What would nature look like within an electrate metaphysics rather than a literate one [as if we didn't already know(tice)], and how might we attempt to invent a metaphysics that would provide a more "sustainable" contruction of nature. Such a new perspective would hopefully be beneficial toward solving public policy issues about environmental issues by providing practical guidance that would exist alongside the pure reason that the scientific community provides. |
