Notes from our class discussion about Rhetorical Agency on 1/20/11.

1. Communal Notes on
Rhetorical Agency Readings
CCR 633 ::: Jan. 20, 2011

2. Agency: Promiscuous and Protean
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
• “communal and participatory, hence, both
constituted and constrained by externals
that are both material and symbolic.”
• Leff - tradition as constraint
• elsewhere - language as constraint
• technology - what’s socially allowed,
approved
• community conventions, knowledge

3. • “is ‘invented’ by authors who are points of
articulation.”
• unified term “authors” pushes against
Lunberg/Gunn/Geisler convo on
bifurcation
• aligns in some ways with Leff’s discussion
on inventional constraints driven by
tradition

4. • “emerges in artistry or craft”
• connections to Kline - technical know-
how, techne
• the craft of effective rhetorical
execution: community knowledge,
kairos, oratorical conventions

5. • “is effected through form”
• technological form
• genre
• linguistic conventions
• tradition (and access to both social
traditions and technological
conventions / tech itself)

6. • “is perverse, that is, inherently protean,
ambiguous, open to reversal.”
• Lundberg and Gunn extend this tenet-
bifurcation

7. How ought we to understand R.A.?
Geisler
• ARS investigations into consciousness and
conditions of agency
• arises from PoMo critique of the
autonomous agent. (Gaonkar)

8. Ouija board, are there any communications?
Lundberg & Gunn
• Bifurcation
• agent/s or subject/s
• agencies
• agents to not necessarily possess agency.
might be the other way around.

9. • “What happens to the conventional
rhetorical account of agency if it starts
out by presuming that agency possesses
the agent, as opposed to the agent
possessing agency as an instrument or
substance?”

10. Teaching the Postmodern Rhetor
Geisler
• ambivalence and agency
• engagement
• interaction

11. Tradition and Agency in
Humanistic Rhetoric
Leff
• We’re always working from what went
before us, both socially and technologically.

12. • “Both the individual agent and the tradition
achieve and change identity through a
reciprocal circulation of influence. Inclusion
within a tradition shapes the individual self
but also, and as a direct result of submitting
to the mores and practices of the
community, the individual gains the power
to shape tradition. Moreover, the agents
who succeed in effecting change in tradition
also change their self-conception since
individual and affiliative identities never lose
connection with one another. (140)

13. • “... this conception of tradition seems
intimately connected with an ambiguous
and interactive conception of rhetorical
agency. Since tradition is not something that
can be preserved in a pristine, original
form, it must come to life through
interventions that interpret the relationship
between past and present. For the
rhetorical humanists, orators are the agents
who undertake this kind of
intervention.” (145)