Transindividuating Nodes: Rhetoric as the Architechnical Organizer of Networks

Abstract

Questioning modernity’s humanism, rhetorical theory has increasingly sought to describe the rhetorical force of the material. Central to this movement has been Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT). While Latour’s theory is useful, his general aversion to rhetoric prevents ANT from fully explaining processes of translation or the politics of networks. This essay mobilizes Bernard Stiegler’s theorization of individuation and technics as a necessary corrective to ANT. Their hybridization facilitates a theory of rhetoric as the architechnical organizer of networks. I develop this position by analyzing Facebook’s mobilization of the slogan “time well spent” after revelations about their problematic role in the 2016 US presidential elections. This case demonstrates how rhetoric translates memory to build networks, reshaping the subjectivity and politics of involved—and excluded—actants. Such an approach overcomes the rhetorical shortcomings of ANT and Stiegler while refiguring discussions regarding systems of individuation, rhetorical subjectivity, and power in networked relation.

Keywords:

• Bernard Stiegler
• Bruno Latour
• Facebook
• networks
• technics

Acknowledgments

A version of this essay was presented at the 2018 Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference in Minneapolis. I thank Damien Smith Pfister, Jamie Downing, Susan Jarratt, and the two anonymous reviewers for all of their instrumental feedback.

Notes

¹ Rhetoric’s published investigation of Stiegler is limited to inquiry regarding grammatization by Tinnell, and DPfister and Wood’s exploration of “analogico-digital images.”

² Simondon’s primary work on individuation, L’individuation Psychique et Collective, has not yet been translated to English, therefore my interpretation stems from his shorter works and secondary materials.

³ Although Stiegler argues the psychic, collective, and technical are all modes of individual, for clarity I use the term individual to refer to psychic individuals.

⁴ Recognizing the debate over the materiality of discourse/rhetoric (e.g., Cloud; Greene), I use the term “durable” to distinguish between objects with a lasting physical presence and those that have more ephemeral materiality.

⁵ George A. Kennedy outlines a wide range of rhetorics outside the durable technologies of literacy in the first five chapters of Comparative Rhetoric.

⁶ For the purposes of my theorization, I argue individual and actant are parallel terms due to their focus on an entity within a set of relations.