Rhetoric: it's alive! Or at least that's the sense I got after reading Edbauer's "Unframing" piece. I had always thought that "Keep Austin Weird" was just a slogan honoring Austin's unique quirkiness; I had no idea that it was envisioned as a stand against big business in Austin. I think that living in the dynamic age of the Internet has made me much more open to the idea of rhetoric as an ecology. For example, we see countless YouTube videos of people offering their own take on a current issue. It's natural then to imagine rhetoric as dynamic and changing in the public sphere, where we have to be attuned to the "processes that both comprise and extend the rhetorics" (Edbauer 19). I don't think this completely dismisses a more static model of the rhetorical situation like Bitzer talks about; rather, I think it's a great extension to the framework we have of rhetoric right now. The notion that you can understand what part of the city is good and bad were great examples of the affective experience; I know that I feel different from when I'm around campus then when I'm back home on Riverside.
That series of photos makes me laugh every time I see it! I hope it didn't really happen, of course, but it's hysterical.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised, too, to read that "Keep Austin Weird" was a campaign against national chains vs. local business, but of course having read it, that makes perfect sense. I was also surprised at how recent it was-- the saying is so pervasive, and it's known all over the state, so I just thought it had been around forever!
It is interesting how quickly something can spread, especially with the aid of the internet. We have a continuously-changing rhetorical situation in this era of 24-hour news and everyone being a journalist.
is that photoshoped? Because I really hope that it isn't, because it is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteYou are not alone in your surprise about "Keep Austin Weird". I had no idea who/what started it. It went viral so quickly and so ubiquitously that I, like Su, "just thought it had been around forever!"
I really can't decide if these church signs are fake or real. I've seen a lot of crazy church signs in my day, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were real. But, now I'm depressed. I thought all dogs went to heaven...
ReplyDeleteEric, you bring up an interesting point when you say this:
I think that living in the dynamic age of the Internet has made me much more open to the idea of rhetoric as an ecology. For example, we see countless YouTube videos of people offering their own take on a current issue. It's natural then to imagine rhetoric as dynamic and changing in the public sphere
The internet itself is totally its own rhetorical ecology. A lot of people have claimed that the internet is a kind of democratic (as in, democracy, not the party) platform for anyone to express their opinions. This claim seems utopian to me--utopian, as in delusional. Think about all the crap you have to dig through before finding something of merit. The internet in this vein is like our government, bureaucratic. I like to imagine the internet as an anarchic space; however, there are controls. Thanks to the Patriot Act, some websites are banned or shut down altogether. It really depends on the user's geography. The internet does, though, possess this dynamic quality where it seems like anything is possible, as long as it is immaterial. I think a lot about the internet and cyberspace in general, so I'm going to stop myself from rambling. I don't really know how I got on this topic anyway.
The internet ate my comment about internet censorship. Great.
ReplyDeleteRedoing my previous comment, I'll throw in my opinions once again.
ReplyDeleteThe internet is definitely one of the most dynamic and quickly developing rhetorical ecologies out there. Think of this: long ago (not really that long) some people on one of the darkest corners of the internet (4chan.org's /b/) posted pictures of cute cats every Saturday to amuse themselves. At some point someone takes the pictures of these cute cats, and posts some moderately funny text on them to create an image macro. These are reposted and duplicated. Eventually these image macros jump the fence into the broader internet, resulting in the creation of a website. Fast forward a bit, and you have lolcats (icanhascheezburger.com/) which is an incredibly profitable website, and the lolcat internet meme continues to spread unstoppably. Another good example of this would be how people have co-opted and altered the Obama YES WE CAN poster both before and after the election, turning it into its own cultural artifact that will likely reemerge during the 2012 campaign in a radically different form than it originally had.
The problem with the internet, however, is that it is plagued with the legacy of a physical world. Websites require hosting, and require addresses. These open them to moderation. Posters have names and IP addresses that similarly open them up to moderation. The Patriot Act is only an extreme example - most internet communities have their own enforcers that will take action whenever someone crosses the line. It is those really crazy, deviant opinions that I consider most important for the internet to be truly democratic. After all, isn't the most important part of democracy being able to at least gauge the expressions of the people that make up the democracy?