“Sharing a World with Others”: Rhetoric’s Ecological Turn and the Transformation of the Networked Public Sphere

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates the extent to which an “ecological turn” in rhetorical studies—a turn toward systemic understandings of circulation and material interrelation—enables us to understand the ways that rhetors transform the networked public sphere. The essay argues that while ecological models have helped attune us to the complex, ever-shifting interrelations that constitute networked environments, they have demonstrated limitations. Specifically, ecological models have deemphasized (1) the historical specificity of rhetorical ecologies, (2) the role that social imaginaries play in structuring rhetorical ecologies, and (3) the ways that rhetors collectively invest in transforming rhetorical ecologies. Drawing on a qualitative study of activism on Twitter, this essay advocates the development of an infrastructural politics, an approach that emphasizes the ecological qualities of public rhetoric—dispersion, complexity, and emergence—while also attuning us to the collective and ethical dimensions of practicing rhetoric in today’s networked public sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• circulation
• digital
• public sphere
• rhetoric

Acknowledgments

I want to thank editor Jacqueline Rhodes, editorial assistant Rebecca Conklin, and two anonymous RSQ reviewers, all of whom offered generous feedback that strengthened this piece. I also want to thank my research assistants Nadira Anderson and Jordan Cabarle, who helped with the qualitative research presented in this piece. I especially want to thank my graduate advisor Donna LeCourt for supporting and shaping this work in its early stages.

Notes

¹ I group a wide variety of approaches under the banner of “ecological models.” In doing so, I extend the work of Kristin Arola, who explains that the varied theoretical traditions of object-oriented ontology, posthumanism, new materialism, and affect studies resonate with one another in ways that merit their categorization together. Citing the work of Vivienne Bozalek and Michalinos Zemblylas, Arola notes that each of these traditions is rooted in “relational ontologies; a critique of dualisms; and engagements with matter and the non-human” (“Perspectives” 386).

² David M. Grant and Jennifer Clary-Lemon highlight the importance of this work in a 2019 call for papers focused on the intersections of decolonial and new materialist scholarship. Clary-Lemon’s “Gifts, Ancestors, and Relations: Notes Toward an Indigenous New Materialism” offers a deeper examination of these intersections.

³ Christina V. Cedillo, for example, has called for rhetoricians to engage more deeply with the work of Stacy Alaimo, Katherine Behar, and Rosi Braidotti (@DrCCedillo).

⁴ In “Ecological Investments and the Circulation of Rhetoric: Studying the ‘Saving Knowledge’ of Dr. Emma Walker’s Social Hygiene Lectures,” I develop the concept of ecological investment as a means of theorizing this phenomenon.

⁵ I interviewed Tiara on 6 November 2019 and 13 November 2019. All of Tiara’s quotations are drawn from the second of these interviews, an hour-long qualitative interview conducted via video conferencing software.