DJs as Technical Communicators: The Rhetorical Synchronicity of Hip Hop Culture 

Over the last four decades, Hip Hop has expanded its influence across various demographics, employing principles akin to those found in technical and professional communication, which can be likened to user-localization of digital and communicative technologies. In “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America”, Tricia Rose(1994),  primarily asserts the enriching an intriguing…

Read More

Collapsing to Compose, Composing to Collapse: Are Digital Griots Agents of Pluriversality?

I’ve been thinking about how the deeply sited nature of diaspora translates into digital spaces that collapse time, space, and embodiment—elements whose intersection manifest as “site,” a concept Han suggests is the antithesis of hyperculture. But I’ve also been thinking about who might guide us through “de-distanced” landscapes, enacting Walter Mignolo’s decolonial concept of “pluriversality,”…

Read More

“Digital Rhetoric and Hope”

I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about AI and its implications for DEI. After reading Bender et al. (2021), I have come to the conclusion that my attitude towards LMs and digital rhetorics is a fairly accurate one. The digital landscape, not unlike the “real” world, is one where access is broadly…

Read More

Listening as Intervention

I’m drawn to Jennifer Clary-Lemon’s new materials environmental rhetoric for many reasons, one of which involves her call for us to “listen better” to the troubled/troubling ways we dwell amidst—and are implicated within—environmental change and destruction.  I think of “listening better” as a valuable extension of “deep listening,” as both approaches to sensed/sensing dwelling provoke…

Read More

Collective Rewilding: What does Broken World thinking entail?

In “Rethinking Repair,” Steven J.Jackson(2014) says: “what happens when we take erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress, as our starting points in thinking through the use of nature?” (p. 221). Our curatorial approach departs from the assumption of a world in flux, defined by uncertainty, fragmentation, and impermanence. Rather than see…

Read More

 Synchronizing Rhetorical Beats Towards Inclusive Practice- DJs as Rhetors

DJs are models of rhetorical excellence, canon makers, time binders who link past, present, and future in the groove and mix; and intellectuals continuously interpreting the history and current realities of their communities in real time. Banks uses the DJ’s practices of the mix, remix, and mixtape as tropes for reimagining writing instruction and the…

Read More