You Are Where You Picnic

Sarah Williams Goldhagen, architecture critic at The New Republic has a splendid review of and essay on several, recently completed public parks (including Chicago's Millennium Park, pictured below). Like the environmental artist Christo, Goldhagen, in this and other essays, treats of the political, social, and economic work that gives rise to architectures and the the political, social, and economic work done by architectures. She thus treats, in my mind, the double work of rhetoric and materiality. The architecture,as the material, works to shape the public, its movements, its values, and its future. However, the material, the architecture is not pre-specified and automatic: it must be made and it is made rhetorically.

Agency Through and Within the Grid

There is, in some circles (that even I sometimes run in), the assumption that nudges (or "hidden persuaders" or "the power of suggestion") somehow render the nudged less active and less critical, and that nudges undermine individual human agency. If you got tricked into eating healthy food, the argument goes, then you were not exercising any critical agency. I have argued elsewhere(s) (and sometimes until I was blue in the face) that rather than a challenge to critical human agency, the presence of nudges (and I would argue that they are ubiquitous and unavoidable) should compel us to redefine just what we mean by and count as agency. Nudges remind us that human agency is imbricated in larger social, cultural, technology, and biological ecologies. Human agencies (those we like and those we don't like) have never stood apart from such ecologies, whose nudges cultivate the very agencies we come to count as part and parcel of who we are.

This imbrication is discussed (or suggested) in a July, 2010, National Geographic story on "The 21st Century Grid." One of the arguments built into this discussion of the evolution of the "smart grid," complete with new nudges, is that a smarter, more automated power grid can mean savvier, active consumers. Currently, our individual use of electrical power is difficult to monitor. In most places, the feedback consists a person coming to your house at intervals and reading your meter. Then, you get the bill in the mail. That's the one nudge you get. I would argue that even sparse nudges are nonetheless nudges. The current grid is not a no-nudge environment but a bad-nudge environment. Moving away from this nudge model, which is basically the same as it was the 1960s, new nudges would include smart meters "that allow consumers to program their appliances [...] at off peak hours, when electricity is cheap." This is similar to the way some cars today allow drivers to their current fuel consumption rates. Anecdotal evidence suggests that such feedback nudges drivers to be more fuel efficient (my father has made this into a game, for instance). The article thus proclaims, "In the 21st century we'll become active participants in the management of this vast and seemingly unknowable network that makes our civilization possible."

Certainly, this will strike most of us as optimistic if not naive. However, there are two key points to be made here with respect to nudges and agency. First, the electrical grid itself cultivates a series of agencies not possible without it (computing, film, television, and ice cream consumption whenever). Second, and related, such nudges do not eliminate something like agency; what they do is cultivate agencies. I'd argue that agency is always already nudged and cultivated. The running agent is made possible by legs; the driving agent made possible by a car. The car nudges us to drive it (it suggests, in other words, that we drive it). A car, however, does not impede upon agency because it "tricks" us into driving it. The car defines an agency that does not exist apart from it.

I thus see nudges as just such technologies. Having a "smart grid" does not make us uncritical un-agents (zombies?). It could very well produce agencies we do not like, but, then, we'd have to argue about that particular agency (without prematurely boiling down a debate about what and why to whether or not). To assume that a "smart grid" impedes upon agency is to presume agency does (or has ever) existed apart from, to borrow from Burke, acts, scenes, purposes, agents, and attitudes. Nudges (re)define the conditions of possibility for human agency. The gird as is is not more empowering because it appears to leave us alone to decide as autonomous agents whether or not to turn the lights off. It simply enables another kind (or quality) of agency--a quality of agency that seems to be increasingly problematic if we hope to increase the efficiency and sufficiency of our power grid, itself the ultimate nudge that cultivates us as the electrical-technological agents we have become: not more or less active or passive, but differently and, thus, debate-able agents, active and wise.

Memory As Activity: Collin Brooke and Proteins

I have finally gotten around to remembering to post this.

In his Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media, Collin Brooke, to make a long story short, rewrites the rhetorical canons through the lens of new media. I was particularly interested in his treatment of memory, given my own interests in cognitive science and the extended mind. With respect to memory, Brooke argues that with new media we can move away from the traditional and Platonic model of memory as absence/presence (or memory as storage) and towards memory as pattern and randomness. Brooke writes,

Perhaps more than any of the other five canons, memory is the one canon whose status as practice is in need of rehabilitation.

That is, memory is not simply or only about absence or presence (you either have a memory that is complete or incomplete), but is also, and perhaps more importantly, about the activity of constructing and dissolving "patterns over time," or what Brooke calls persistence. In this model, memory is not about accurately representing some past event (getting it right), but about constructing memories in particular ways for particular uses (and a lot of this, my psychoanalytical colleagues will justly point out, is unconscious, driven by desire, and thus exceeds critical engagement). Memory, in short, is not something we have; it is something we do.

All of which leads me to fascinating article in Smithsonian about "Making Memories." While the article is haunted by the specter of absence/presence (i.e., speaking of inaccurate or incomplete memories), it deals with memory research and therapeutic practice that are both very much in sync with Brooke's practical take on memory. Researcher Karim Nader has advanced the hypothesis that each time we remember something that memory is literally (at the level of proteins) rebuilt in the mind. That is, we do not simply access a memory in a brain as we remember it. Each time we remember we re-make the memory. For a bit of shorthand: as the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity demonstrates, each time we re-make something it is slightly different from the original version. The organic reproduction of memory seems to work the same way. It explains, for instance, why Nader, and 73% of the rest of us, remember

seeing television footage on September 11 of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. But he was surprised to learn that such footage aired for the first time the following day.

The "very act of remembering," Nader argues, "can change our memories." We rebuild them, we reorganize them, new or related information is blended into them. It is not about storage so much as it is about stories.

The second part of this article, however, really puts this hypothesis to work (and in a way equally relevant to rhetoric and the work of moving people. I would nod her to Diane Davis' work on rhetoric and suggestion in her treatment of Kenneth Burke and Freud.). Alain Brunet, a psychologist, works with sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The hope is that caregivers might be able to weaken the hold of traumatic memories that haunt patients during the day and invade their dreams at night.

And they do this, simply put, by having PTSD sufferer remember their trauma while they are on drugs that inhibit the brain's ability to rebuild the memory, which Nader argues we do each time to remember something. Thus, each time the traumatic memory is remembered it is rebuilt weaker (it is made, to borrow from Brooke, less persistent). It is not, however, just that the memory goes away (this is to re-inscribe the presence/absence understanding of memory). It is, Brunet puts it,

They start to care less about that memory.

The ability to rewrite memories, far from ruining them in terms of accuracy (the presence or absence of true details) reconstructs memories that are less painful and debilitating.

In other words [the article concludes], it just might be what keeps us from living in the past.

And that, I guess, is kairos too.

I Write Like...

Apparently, the prose on this blog reads like David Foster Wallace (and I submitted a couple of different chunks). Interestingly enough, a sample from a journal article I wrote reads like James Joyce, which may not be the best result.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The Positions We Are Given

Reading Everitt's Cicero, more things continue to strike me both about Cicero and rhetoric. Many have argued, myself included, that the ethos of the rhetor emerges from rather than proceeds rhetorical interaction. Ethos is as much a given as it is a got. This is clearly the case for Cicero whole struggle for and against various emergent ethoi his entire life. He worked hard to establish himself as a successful advocate. Once in positions of political power he worked to secure his reputation (by writing self-promotional works), which were often criticized by his opponents. He also struggled against his status as a "New Man": he lacked "then appropriate blue-blooded pedigree" (14). That is, his ethos continually reemerge within the shifting political climate of republican-becoming-imperial Rome.

Just as important, however, were the forces that shaped Cicero's political views and positions. Cicero moved from an optimate to populare on several occasions. He was sometimes with Pompey and sometimes with Caesar. He often represented both friends and enemies in the courts. History is harsh on those who are found, at different points in time, to occupy competing positions. And, often, rightly so. However, I would argue that our rush to judge harshly marks the instability of political views and position--including our own. In other words, we judge others for switching positions so that we might maintain the view that we pick at all.

The notion that we freely choose our views is easy to complicate in the case of Cicero because of how personal politics were in Rome. Tullia, Cicero's beloved daughter, chose for her third husband "a reckless and womanizing playboy" (200). Cicero did not approve. They were further, political implications. Cicero was, at the time, the governor of Cicilia (a position he was assigned in the wake of new laws about the duties of former Counselors). The previous governor, one Appius Claudius, had decided to stick around. This created several problems with respect to Cicero's ability to govern and protect the province. Cicero had "chosen" the diplomatic path: don't piss Appius off so that he might, at least, not work deliberately to make things difficult. This choice made sense given the fragility of the situation in Cicilia and in Rome. And the arrangement was working.

That is, until Tullia married the playboy Publius Cornelius Lentulus Dolabella, who was just then bringing Appius to trial "on a treason charge" (200). Cicero, by virtue of his daughter's marriage, found himself positioned against Appius. "Here I am in my province paying Appius all kinds of compliment, when out of the blue I find his prosecutor becoming my son-in-law" (200). This situation, thankfully, took care of itself when Cicero's term (his position) as governor ended. Cicero was also coming to terms with Publius as a son-in-law: "We all find him charming [...] He is clever and agreeable as you please. Other characteristics, of which you are aware, we must put up with" (200).

We are agents making choices to be sure; we are not, however, the only agents. Circumstance, the actions of others, often choose for us. This is not to say that we cannot struggle, but it is to argue that rhetoric (and its critics) must acknowledge that the moment, more often than not, seizes us. And, in such moments, we must muddle through, which seems to be the strategy that most aptly describes the life and times of Cicero.

A Material Marcus Tullius

As part of my summer research campaign, I am reading Anthony Everitt's biography of Cicero, Cicero. Reading it, I am amazed but not surprised by Cicero's material rhetoric, by which I mean his persuasive efforts through spatial and temporal action (as opposed to oratorical efforts). I am not surprised because as a successful orator, politician, and advocate, I assume Cicero did more than give a good speech. I am surprised by the extent to which Cicero marshaled space and time in his persuasive efforts. I attribute this to the fact that much of we (in rhetoric) know of Cicero we know through his speeches or writings, which exist, to a certain extent, outside time and space. I might also attribute it to a certain privileging or understanding of rhetoric as purely or only discursive.

A few notes before I proceed. I do not mean to discount speeches or other discursive efforts. I mean only to mark the rhetoric that occurs other ways. Indeed, much of Cicero's effectiveness in the case I will shortly describe comes from his speeches and how he arranged them. I would also acknowledge here that "material rhetoric" is, as with most things, a concept currently under construction. In brief, it concerns the rhetorical force of materiality (spaces, bodies, etc) and the rhetorical constitution of things such as spaces and bodies. Finally, it is probably also true that the material and the discursive are not polar opposites or even mutually exclusive. Speaking and writing are surely also bodily (and technologically mediated) acts.

The trial of Caius Verres, former governor of Sicily, and about whom there is a Mountain Goats song, showcases Cicero's material rhetoric. Cicero, who apparently rarely acted as prosecutor, was constrained by several (material) factors. First, at this point in Roman history juries were composed entirely of senators, making bribery and peer pressure of a sort more common. Second, Verres and his allies went to great lengths to delay the trial both to allow them time to stack the jury and to draw out the trial (over Roman holidays and other conventions of the time) in order to weaken the impact of the evidence.

To combat these material rhetorical moves, Cicero enacted his own robust rhetoric, both discursive and material. Primarily, Cicero worked to speed-up the trail to force a decision before a long break. As a result of his own detective work, Cicero had an "air tight" case, but the longer the trial took the less likely it became that a conviction would be secured.

It was crucial that Cicero finish his presentation before the court went into recess with the opening of Pompey's games on August 16. In the event, he managed to set out his material expeditiously as well as comprehensively. On August 13 he rested his case. (79)

Cicero's move to speed up the trial was accomplished by augmenting the traditional order of the trail. Securing permission to do so, Cicero began with his evidence against Verres rather than his opening remarks.

Cicero's coup was devastating for the defense and had immediate consequences. (79)

By virtue of what we could call a rhetorical move that addressed the material conditions of the trial, Cicero reversed what had been a foregone conclusion: Verres acquittal. Because Cicero forced the issue, the senate had no choice but to convict Verres.

Today the eyes of the world are upon you. This man's case will establish whether a jury composed exclusively of Senators can possibly convict some who is very very guilty--and very rich [...] No such excuses can extenuate the number and scale of his offenses. (79)

Surely a great speech that played an important role in convicting Verres; however, it was Cicero's material rhetoric which forced such a scrutinous gaze upon the Roman Senate.

Cicero's success had, then, its own material consequences. His actions, including composing and distributing speeches "he might have delivered had he had the chance" (80),

made a powerful case for reform of the courts and the jury system [...] Later in the autumn the Senatorial monopoly of juries was rescinded and their share of the memebership reduced to one third. (80)

Cicero well understood that oratory takes place in space and time, and that if these are stacked against you your words have little chance of achieving any effect. Cicero, as Everitt demonstrates, understood that the rule of law and the various institutions that uphold it are vital to the law working at all.

As a figure for and of rhetoric, Cicero and his victory in the trial of Verres marks rhetoric's materiality.

In(tro)ducing Symbolic Action

I have always found it more than a little difficult to introduce students to the concept of symbolic action in rhetoric. Specifically, marking the distinction between sign and symbol (a sign as "representation" of sorts and a symbol as a "projection"). The etymology of "symbol" suggests putting together or throwing, whereas "sign" is seen as a token or a representation. The difference here has always struck me as crucial with respect to rhetoric and language. Language from rhetoric's perspective is about doing something out in the world rather than merely representing something in the world. Or, put another way, language is not about communicating or packaging an idea but is part and parcel of how we generate ideas at all. Language's primary purpose is asignification, which is why Will continues to fascinate me. Muckelbauer describes the "'asignifying' dimension of language" as focused "forces, actions, and effects" and less on something like meaning, which I would align (for my present purposes at least) with the sign.

As part of my summer reading (for both pleasure and profession), I have been working through Ed Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild (as I work my way back from Andy Clark, my go to scholar for all things cognitive), which advances the argument that human cognition is often distributed across groups and artifacts. I had been reading it to mark the difference between the "distributed cognition" model Hutchins proposes and the "extended mind" model advanced by Clark (I want to post on this soon as it is, in part, the crux of an article I am finishing). To flesh out his model, Hutchins focuses exclusively on ship navigation or pilotage. And navigation, with its various discourses, and methods of "representation" turn out to be a great way to chart the particularities of symbolic action as distinct from the process of signification.

The charts of navigation are often assumed to be simple representations of territory, which are valuable only in their accuracy. Maps, then, are taken as signs. But Hutchins points out that, particularly in the case of navigating at sea, that a chart is likewise "an analogue computer" (61). A chart is certainly in part representational, but it is also computational. I don't mean to suggest that computation be made synonymous with asignification, but the notion of maps as computational moves us further in the direction of the projecting, throwing, and putting together that marks symbolic activity. It is also to argue (in a bit) that Hutchins can help to complicate the distinction between sign and symbol and signification and asignification.

Moving us even further in this direction is Hutchins' discussion of star charts and constellations. Star charts could certainly be seen as a sign system. We attach labels to stars or collections of stars in order to ascribe meaning consistently. They are signifying and interested in meaning.

In this superimposition of internal ["the ability to identify the linear constellations"] and external ["the arrangement of stars in the heavens"], elements of the external structure are given culturally meaningful relationships to one another.

Constellations are also very much about meaning. However, they are also very much about actions and effects. As Hutchins argues, it makes very little sense to judge a navigational representation based solely on their accuracy or ability to convey meaning. Hutchins makes this point by comparing Western navigation traditions with those of Micronesian ones (and they differ quite a bit in several key aspects). In addition to demonstrating the operational bias of previous ethnographic work on navigation and its misrepresenations (yes) of Micronesian navigation, this comparison draws out the asignifying thrust of navigational signs. Accuracy takes a back seat to what Lewis (quoted in Hutchins) calls "the stern test of landfall." Micronesian navigators, for instance, invent phantom islands is order to aid navigation. That is, they create signs that represent nothing. They are asignifying signs created solely to achieve a particular effect. Meaning makes sense not only in terms its ability to accurately translate geographical features into geometric lines. The meaning makes sense in terms of its ability to activate successful navigation.

And this seems to form a part of the problem, though. I am moving back and forth between describing the same thing as either a sign or a symbol. I am tempted into arguing that symbols are distinct from signs; but I am simultaneously aware that the same thing can be seen as either a sign or a symbol. And this, then, is the difficulty of introducing symbolic action: to make the familiar strange. To move from seeing what I am doing when I label something as a far less passive action than I might suppose. Hutchins argues that looking up at the night sky

in terms of linear constellations is a simple representational artifice that converts the moving field of stars into a fixed frame of reference.

And while Hutchins uses "representation" here, I would argue he has in mind something much more like symbolic action. Constellations are not simply or only labels, they are a conceptually framework that does something out in the world to enable a certain kind of action.

This seeing is not a passive perceptual process.

But constellations are also signs that ascribe meaning. They are, as Hutchins writes, representations.

Is the key (difficulty) recognizing the sign's asignification? To treat words or labels or charts as signs (which is accurate - hey) is to miss the action?