{"id":919,"date":"2016-01-10T13:10:05","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T13:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/?page_id=919"},"modified":"2016-01-19T14:06:56","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T14:06:56","slug":"description","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/description\/","title":{"rendered":"Course Description"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This seminar will attend to the scene of responsive engagement with or among nonhuman others. Traditionally, rhetoric names a specifically human art or science, requiring at least one discrete human subject at the center of its operations. Even what the discipline of communication studies calls \u201cextrapersonal communication,\u201d which involves communication with a nonhuman other (an animal, a plant, a deity, a ghost, an object, a machine, etc.), presumes first of all a preexisting human subject who uses rhetoric to establish the connection. However, in this seminar we will honor this weighty inheritance in the tradition of what Avital Ronell calls the noble traitor, taking it up in order to expose its limits and presumptions.<\/p>\n<p>We will, for example, examine the ways in which<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the figure of \u201cthe human\u201d is produced through ahuman or inhuman communications very broadly conceived;<\/li>\n<li>attend to a generalized notion of rhetoricity\u2014a fundamental affectability, persuadability, or responsivity\u2014that remains irreducible to \u201cspeech\u201d and symbolic exchange more generally;<\/li>\n<li>interrogate the predicament of addressivity or responsivity in the face of (or among) animals, objects, deities, and the dead (and\/or\u00a0undead)<\/li>\n<li>\u2014and\/but also deconstruct the clean distinctions implied in such designations as \u201cthe animal,\u201d the object,\u201d \u201cthe dead,\u201d and \u201cthe divine,\u201d exposing the ways in which these dangerous supplements are mobilized in the name of the collective noun \u201cthe human.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The downside of this broad approach is that we&#8217;ll have time only for a kind of speed-date\u00a0rendezvous with some of the most engaging\u00a0articulations of contemporary\u00a0rhetorical theory. As you&#8217;ll see when you browse\u00a0the list of texts for the course, so very, very much has had to be left out. The modest aim here, then, will be to <em>open<\/em> a space for provocative reflection on extrahuman\u2014rhetorical\u2014relations, on what takes place at the dimly lit intersection of these three terms. We won&#8217;t be interested in finally wrapping up the nagging question of extrahuman rhetorics, obviously, but in holding it open, probing and pushing the limits of the <em>anthropos<\/em>, in part by interrogating the relations that constitute the conditions for the appearance of the figure of &#8220;the human&#8221; itself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/\">Course Home<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/description\/\">Course Description<\/a>\u00a0| <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/assignments\/\">Assignments<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/texts\/\">Texts<\/a>\u00a0| <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/e-387m-extrahuman-rhetorical-relations\/schedule\/\">Schedule<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This seminar will attend to the scene of responsive engagement with or among nonhuman others. Traditionally, rhetoric names a specifically human art or science, requiring at least one discrete human subject at the center of its operations. Even what the discipline of communication studies calls \u201cextrapersonal communication,\u201d which involves communication with a nonhuman other (an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":917,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"nosidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-919","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/919\/revisions\/996"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}