I figured I would respond to question one, which is also connected to question three on the “blog carnival” prompt, as I intend to revisit some of the responses I have made in the past few weeks in my nineties to answer the question, “What are digital rhetorics now?” and “What, as rhetoric and writing readers, writers, teachers, researchers, and learners, might we do with digital rhetorics?” In light of the readings we have done in this class, I will start with Mailloux (2000) and the background of disciplinary transition.
If we are to trace what used to count as digital rhetoric and its transition to what it is now, we also need to account for the disciplinary anxiety of the field of rhetoric in the 20th century and the tussle for disciplinary and institutional autonomy (p. 5). Through this developmental process, Mailloux refers to scholars such as Fred Newton Scott (1980) and their Platonic backings of the field and its methodologies as scientific (qtd. on p. 7). Similarly, J.P. Ryan (1918), Mailloux claims, posits that “rhetoric as science” was the reputation in colleges, though there was an exigence to move beyond that disciplinary identity (p. 10).
Progressively, Mailloux argues that rhetoric moved from being “the science of rhetorical study to the rhetorical study of science,” which was propagated by the scholarly critical exchanges among Thomas Kuhn, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Chaim Perelman, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca in the 1960s (p. 10). What the efforts of these scholars achieved was the return of rhetoric to the humanities and social sciences, the legitimation of the development of sub-disciplines within the field (p. 11), and the birth of possible rhetorical paths of thought conceptualized as paradigms within the field of “new rhetoric” (p. 15). This new rhetorical identity, therefore, becomes the symbolic labyrinth that gives room for directions in alternate and multiple realities (Borges, 2018). One of these realities, I posit, is digital rhetoric.
The earlier phase of digitalization is more connected to familiarization with technological inventions, which was at its peak in 1978. Selfe & Hawisher (2002) claim that while technology was becoming a part of people’s livelihood, it was in fact affected by racism and other socio-economic factors. In other words, western supremacy, as it dominates the preoccupation of the field of rhetoric (Octalog, 1988), also dominates the digitized world and its connection to rhetorical studies.
Continuing on the conversations trails of the Octalogs and how the concerns in the field is continuously problematized and shifting, while earlier Octalogs (Octalog I & II) discussed the field of rhetoric as predominantly white, male and European demographic, Octalog III proves that scholars in the field had started negotiating multiple and contested understandings of what rhetoric represents and this continues onto the most recent conversation of the fourth Octalog in 2021 at CCCC; where scholars are the field are more culturally diverse and now emphasize individual autonomy, embodied methodologies, and the need to adopt transdisciplinary bottom-up interventions for solving complex social issues rather than top-down designs and policies (Hurley, 2021).
Consequently, when we think of what digital rhetoric is “now,” we begin to think from the perspective of where the field of rhetoric itself is also currently positioned in the larger scheme of human affairs and how its digital subfield is connected to that positionality. To echo Han (2022), I believe that digital rhetoric in present times is less about digitality and more about the heterogeneous identities projected through that channel. In other words, digitalization, post-COVID and in the social justice turn of the field, has become a problematizing tool that amplifies and zeroes in on different cultures operating simultaneously within spaces that function as “hypermarkets of culture [and] a hyperspace of possibilities” (p. 6).
Continuing the claims of Han (2022) and the theorization of hypertext and hyperculture, the functioning of hypertext documents and the interconnectedness of metadata are all actors in relationships, to invoke the actor-network theory, that are intertwined (p. 8) to account for continuing shrinking distance among cultures (p. 9) and the amplification of individual humanity and relevance. Digitalization, therefore, plays an active role in the wake of hyperculturalization (p. 10).
In response to the second part of the question, which is “What, as rhetoric and writing readers, writers, teachers, researchers, and learners, might we do with digital rhetorics?”, it has been established that digital rhetoric as a subfield of rhetoric has become a humanitarian tool, or more succinctly, a defense weapon, that we could use our vantage point of engagement in the larger scheme of the social justice discourse. A vivid example of what we might do with digital rhetoric as a writer or researcher is what Banks (2011) did with the metaphor of the ‘digital griots” and the role of the DJ, an everyday person in contact with digitalization, as a community rhetor, a rhetorical voice for identity, belonging, and cultural relevance (p. 28). Banks argues that like the DJ, writers in the field also need to start thinking of their roles as cultural and political voices in the digital age, advocating for pedagogical integration and rootedness and “intersectional analysis, intergenerational inquiry, and intercultural connection” (p. 33).
As academic teachers, we need to explore innovative and inclusive digital teaching methods, designs, and tools in composition and rhetoric that grant access to our multiply marginalized students. As mentors or social educators, we need to emphasize responsible and respectful online communication and the emotional and physical consequences of online bullying and recklessness.
In conclusion, we are all operating simultaneously as learners and teachers in different digital spaces that are affiliated with various social statuses or positionalities. While we are in these spaces, we need to develop critical thinking skills to evaluate the credibility and persuasiveness of digital texts and the implications of our engagements.
[Mailloux, 2000; Ryan, 1918; Scott, 1980; Borges, 2018; Selfe & Hawisher, 2002; Octalog, 1988; Hurley, 2021; Han, 2022; Banks, 2011]