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ABSTRACT
The “turn” (linguistic turn, critical turn, new material turn, etc.) is a prominent concept in the production of rhetoric’s intellectual history. This essay argues that academic turns are commonly figured through tropes of classical physics that portray time as linear, the field as an empirical path, and turns as discrete, progressively patterned events that can be reflected upon as determinate moments in time. This figuring of reflection reconditions a representationalist orientation to discourse even while scholars may be developing nonrepresentationalist theories of rhetoric. Simultaneously, academic turns figured through classical physics are sutured with neoclassical assumptions of neoliberalism, the prevailing political economy of the modern academy, which promotes accumulation and quantitative growth above other values. This infusion of neoliberalism in academic writing, however, can be disrupted through tropes of quantum physics, such as entanglement and indeterminacy, and can cultivate a performative orientation to discourse that attunes students of rhetoric to how history is continuously written anew. Engaging the centennial issue of Quarterly Journal of Speech as an assemblage of turns, the essay considers the ethical implications of troping rhetoric’s intellectual history through academic writing practices and concludes by attending to the way we figure rhetoric when conceptualizing what rhetorical scholars study.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful for the intellectual generosity of Chris Gamble, Joshua Hanan and the reviewers of this essay, including John Muckelbauer who acknowledged himself during the review process. Their contributions substantially improved this essay. I also thank Daniel H. Kim who co-authored an earlier iteration of this argument for conference presentation, Nathan Stormer for his mentorship and Justin Eckstein, my accountability buddy.
Notes
1. Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari, What is Philosophy? trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 106.
2. Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn, ed. Richard Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1967), 1.
3. Phillip Wander, “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism,” Central States Speech Journal 9, no. 1 (1983): 1–18.
4. Christopher Norris, The Deconstructive Turn: Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1983), 1.
5. Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987), 1; Steven Seidman, The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1.
6. Ian H. Angus and Lenore Langsdorf, The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse, ed. Ian H. Angus and Lenore Langsdorf (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1993), 1.
7. Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso, 1998), 1.
8. Charles E. Morris III, “The Archival Turn in Rhetorical Studies; Or, The Archive’s Rhetorical (Re)Turn,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9, no. 1 (2006): 113–15.
9. Ronald Walter Greene, “The Aesthetic Turn and the Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation,” Argumentation & Advocacy 35, no. 1 (1998): 19–30.
10. Patricia Ticineto Clough, “Introduction,” in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 1.
11. Keith Erickson, “Presidential Rhetoric's Visual Turn: Performance Fragments and the Politics of Illusionism,” Communication Monographs 67, no. 2 (2000): 138–58.
12. Donovan Conley and Greg Dickinson, “Textural Democracy,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 1 (2010): 2.
13. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, “Towards a Speculative Philosophy,” in The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, eds. Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman (Melbourne, Austrailia: re.press, 2011), 1–18.
14. Elaine Kelly, “Sovereign Matters: What Can the ‘New Materialist Turn’ offer Theorizations of Sovereignty?” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 28, no. 6 (2014): 751–59.
15. Richard Grusin, The Nonhuman Turn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 1.
16. Robin E. Jensen, “An Ecological Turn in Rhetoric of Health Scholarship: Attending to the Historical Flow and Percolation of Ideas, Assumptions, and Arguments,” Communication Quarterly 63, no. 5 (2015): 522.
17. Dana L. Cloud and Joshua Gunn, “Introduction: W(h)ither Ideology?” Western Journal of Communication 75, no. 4 (2011): 414.
18. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 139.
19. Bradford Vivian, “Book Reviews,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 280.
20. Joshua S. Hanan, Indradeep Ghosh, and Kaleb W. Brooks, “Banking on the Present: The Ontological Rhetoric of Neo-Classical Economics and Its Relation to the 2008 Financial Crisis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100, no. 2 (2014): 145–49.
21. Luke Winslow, “Rich, Blessed, and Tenured: A Homological Exploration of Grant Writing, Prosperity Theology, and Neoliberalism,” Western Journal of Communication 79, no. 3 (2015): 265.
22. Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 121.
23. Hanan, Ghosh, and Brooks, “Banking on the Present,” 141.
24. John Muckelbauer, The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Change (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), 33–36.
25. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 33 (italics in original).
26. Thomas Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2013), 9.
27. Ibid., 16.
28. Bas C. Van Fraassen, An Introduction of the Philosophy of Time and Space (New York: Random House, 1970), 1–224; Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1995), 83–102.
29. Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion, 95.
30. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 106.
31. Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World: Mott's Translation Revised, trans. Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934), 6. [Originally published in 1729]
32. Ibid., 48.
33. Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,” in Cultural Studies, eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 300.
34. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 21.
35. Barbara Biesecker and Jeremy Grossman, “Introduction,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 1 (emphasis mine).
36. James Darsey, “Road-Tripping on Route 66: A Response to Medhurst's Map of Abandoned Paths,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 205.
37. Martin J. Medhurst, “Looking Back on Our Scholarship: Some Paths Now Abandoned,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 190.
38. Ibid., 193.
39. Biesecker and Grossman, “Introduction,” 1.
40. Kirt H. Wilson, “The National and Cosmopolitan Dimensions of Disciplinarity: Reconsidering the Origins of Communication Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 255 (emphasis mine).
41. Raymie E. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 153 (emphasis mine).
42. Debra Hawhee, “Rhetoric's Sensorium,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 101, no. 1 (2015): 10 (emphasis mine).
43. Christian O. Lundberg, “Revisiting the Future of Meaning,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 184.
44. Robert Asen, “Critical Engagement through Public Sphere Scholarship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 132.
45. Joan Faber McAlister, “Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary/Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings/Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 302 (emphasis mine).
46. Joshua Gunn, “Speech's Sanatorium,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 27–28 (emphasis in original).
47. Ibid., 27.
48. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 155 (emphasis mine).
49. Ibid., 152.
50. Charles E. Morris III, “Context's Critic, Invisible Traditions, and Queering Rhetorical History,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 228 (emphasis mine).
51. Karma R. Chavez, “Beyond Inclusion: Rethinking Rhetoric's Historical Narrative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 163.
52. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 153.
53. Ibid.
54. The linguistic turn refers to a trend within the theoretical humanities where scholars began to consider the influence of language in the practice of philosophy, complicating purely Cartesian and analytical pursuits. Turns, used in the way I am describing (academic turns), were not common prior to the 1960's linguistic turn. The most widely recognized pronouncement of this turn is Rorty's The Linguistic Turn. However, he borrowed this phrase from Gustav Bergmann's review of a book, Strawson's Individuals. Rorty, The Linguistic Turn, 1; Gustav Bergmann, “Strawson's Ontology,” Journal of Philosophy 57, no. 19 (1960): 601–22.
55. Taylor C. Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan,” Studies in Comparative International Development 44, no. 2 (2009): 138. This essay offers helpful context for the evolution of the term neoliberalism. “Neoliberalism has rapidly become an academic catchphrase. From only a handful of mentions in the 1980s, use of the term has exploded during the past two decades, appearing in nearly 1,000 academic articles annually between 2002 and 2005. Neoliberalism is now a predominant concept in scholarly writing on development and political economy.” Compare this time frame to the dates in the references of the opening paragraph of this essay that lists academic turns.
56. Manning and Massumi, Thought in the Act, 121.
57. Ibid.
58. Christina R. Foust and Daniel J. Lair, “The Political, Cultural, and Economic Assault on Higher Education,” The Review of Communication 12, no. 2 (2012): 160.
59. Darsey, “Road-Tripping on Route 66,” 205.
60. Manning and Massumi, Thought in the Act, 121.
61. This is one way neoliberalism attempts to constitute individuals in academia, especially when any individual's “turn” would not be possible without a wider range of material–discursive practices of the discipline. Barad offers a critique of the metaphysics of individualism, which she suggests is prevalent in science studies and feminist studies. Publications and turns are not properties of individual persons, much like “gender, race, nationality, class, and sexuality” are not “properties of individual persons” Meeting the Universe Halfway, 57.
62. Karen Barad, “Intra-Active Entanglements: An Interview with Karen Barad,” Kvinder, Kon & Forskning NR 1–2 (2012): 12.
63. Ibid., 13.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 153.
67. Barad, “Intra-Active Entanglements,” 13; see also Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 71–96.
68. Muckelbauer, The Future of Invention, 37–50.
69. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 92.
70. Barad stresses that objectivity is not lost altogether: “what is required for objectivity is an unambiguous and reproducible account of marks on bodies. This requires the intra-active enactment of a ‘cut’ (determined by the larger experimental arrangement) that unambiguously differentiates the ‘object’ (that which ‘causes’ the mark) from the ‘agencies of observation’ (the ‘effect’ or that which receives the mark), thereby constituting a reproducible and unambiguous measurement of one part of the phenomenon by another part;” “objectivity is about being accountable to the specific materializations of which we are a part.” See Meeting the Universe Halfway, 320; 91.
71. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 89.
72. Muckelbauer, The Future of Invention, 12.
73. Andrew King, “Scholarship Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 127–131.
74. Asen, “Critical Engagement,” 132.
75. King, “Scholarship Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” 128.
76. Ibid., 129.
77. Michael Calvin McGee, The “Ideograph”: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, no. 1 (1980): 1–16.
78. Michael Calvin McGee, “Not Men, but Measures”: The Origins and Import of an Ideological Principle,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 64, no. 2 (1978): 141–54.
79. William R. Brown, “Ideology as Communication Process,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 64, no. (1978): 123–40.
80. Thomas B. Farrell, “Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 62, no. 1 (1976): 1–14.
81. Hassan, The Postmodern Turn, 1; Steven Seidman, The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 9.
82. Raymie McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of the Subject,” in The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse, ed. Ian H. Angus and Lenore Langsdorf (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1993), 53.
83. Jameson, The Cultural Turn, 3.
84. Conley and Dickinson, “Textural Democracy,” 3.
85. David Staples, “Women's Work and the Ambivalent Gift of Entropy,” in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 125.
86. Richard Wilkins and Karen Wolf, “The Role of Ethnography in Rhetorical Analysis: The New Rhetorical Turn,” Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 3, no. 1 (2012): 8–12.
87. Bryant, Srnicek and Harman, “Towards a Speculative Philosophy,” 1.
88. Morris, “Context's Critic,” 233; see citation 31.
89. Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56, no. 2 (1989): 91–111. See also Lundberg, “Revisiting the Future of Meaning,” 176 and Darsey, “Road-Tripping on Route 66,” 205.
90. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 154.
91. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 154; see Barbara Biesecker, “Prospects of Rhetoric for the Twenty-First Century: Speculations on Evental Rhetoric Ending with a Note on Barack Obama and a Benediction by Jacques Lacan; A Response to Samuel L. Becker's ‘Rhetorical Studies for a Contemporary World,” in Reengaging the Prospects for Rhetoric: Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Mark H. Porrovecchio (New York: Routledge, 2010), 17.
92. Biesecker, “Prospects of Rhetoric for the Twenty-First Century,” 17.
93. McKerrow, “‘Research in Rhetoric’ Revisited,” 155.
94. Dillip P. Gaonkar, “Rhetoric and its Double: Reflections on the Rhetorical Turn in the Human Sciences,” in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simons (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 341–366; Dillip P. Gaonkar, “The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science,” Southern Communication Journal 58, no. 4 (1993): 258–95; Edward Schiappa, “Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 34, no. 3 (2001): 260–74.
95. Lundberg, “Revisiting the Future of Meaning,” 183.
96. Ibid., 178.
97. Ibid.
98. Raymie E. McKerrow, “Corporeality and Cultural Rhetoric: A Site for Rhetoric's Future,” Southern Communication Journal 63, no. 4 (1998): 315–28.
99. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 94.
100. Muckelbauer, The Future of Invention, 43–50.
101. Robert L. Ivie, “Enabling Democratic Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 54.
102. Kendall R. Phillips, “The Event of Dissension: Reconsidering the Possibilities of Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 63.
103. Lundberg, “Revisiting the Future of Meaning,” 180.
104. Chavez, “Beyond Inclusion,” 167.
105. Megan Foley, “Time for Epideictic,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 209–211.
106. Morris, “Context's Critic,” 239.
107. Hawhee, “Rhetoric's Sensorium,” 13.
108. Celeste M. Condit, “Multi-Layered Trajectories for Academic Contributions to Social Change,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 269.
109. Asen, “Critical Engagement,” 133.
110. Gunn, “Speech's Sanatorium,” 21.
111. Medhurst, “Looking Back on Our Scholarship,” 192 (emphasis mine).
112. Jenny Rice, “Pathologia,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 35–44.
113. Gunn, “Speech's Sanatorium,” 28.
114. G. Thomas Goodnight, “Rhetoric and Communication: Alternative Worlds of Inquiry,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 147.
115. Nathan Stormer, “Recursivity: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Mnesis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 1 (2013): 43 (emphasis in original).
116. See Nathan Stormer's article in this issue, “Rhetoric's Diverse Materiality: Polythetic Ontology and Genealogy.”
117. See Samuel Becker, “Rhetorical Studies for the Contemporary World,” in The Prospect of Rhetoric, eds. Edwin Black and Lloyd Blitzer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 21–43; Lawrence Rosenfield, “The Anatomy of Critical Discourse,” Speech Monographs 35, no. 1 (1968): 50–69.
118. Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric, 14.
119. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 133.
120. Ibid., 448.