Rick Grimes, the humanist subject and/or posthumanist agent

The readings on rhetorical situation and agency both deal with subject to some degree. Amongst the essays in both topics’ discussions, two types of subject have prevalently appeared: the humanist subject and the postmodern subject. Within rhetorical agency, Lundberg and Gunn describe the autonomous humanist subject and suggest rhetoricians move past this understanding in favor of one based on postmodern thought (much like Biesecker does with situation). My response this week will attempt to make sense of L&G’s essay and their séance allegory.

This Sunday’s (11/18) episode of The Walking Dead demonstrates an instance of rhetorical agency that is easily relatable to L&G’s séance allegory. In it, Rick Grimes, one of the show’s protagonists and the unspoken leader of a group of post-apocalypse survivors, experiences his own sort of séance shortly after he loses his wife Lori during childbirth. 

Rhetorical agency is “seen as the activity of a subject pursuing an intention” (Geisler 10). The humanist subject as agent is autonomous, “transcendental,” and “godly” whose agency is self-possessed and absolute, preexistent, a priori, resemblant of Platonic, Hobbesian, and Kantian thought, seen strictly as affected subject (L&G 84, 86). The posthumanist subject is aligned with the postmoderns like Derrida and Foucault and considered producers, articulators, the “agent who initiates these effects,” both the creation and creator (L&G 88). 

Back to The Walking Dead, Rick receives a mysterious phone call after he discovers Lori has been completely consumed by a Walker. I call it mysterious because telecommunications have been cut off for over nine months. The first call initiates the question of agency: who the hell is calling? and how? and why? While the audience quickly realizes Rick is “communicating” with his “dead wife,” i.e. himself, Rick is “relatively unable to locate the seat of agency” just like the user of a Ouija Board (L&G 85). 

The show does not do as good a job of Rick’s internalization of the Lori calls as the graphic novel does. Below is Rick’s response when he finds out this woman he has been speaking to is his dead wife:

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So, Rick as humanist agent would be exemplified in the show... if I remember correctly (can’t find any videos), Rick goes no further in contemplating the communication with his wife postmortem, taking what “Lori” has to say and suggest he do at face value. For its audience, the show does little besides leave room to speculate whether or not Rick is really talking to those beyond. TV show humanist Rick seems to accept this mysterious voice as an autonomous agent who affects him as a subject to move on and focus on his children. 

However, the graphic novel explicitly tells its reader the conversations are not real. Rick then becomes a posthumanist subject who both possesses and is possessed by agency. It is absolutely clear that Rick creates the Lori he speaks to and is fully aware of her fictitious existence postmortem in his head as a coping mechanism for his failures as a leader after losing so many in his group. This is seen below as he and Michonne discuss the conversations they have with their dead partners:

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So, my basic and dumbed down version of rhetorical agents and agency comes down to this: humanist agency involves an affected subject whereas posthumanist agency involves an equally efficacious agent and effected subject who are one and the same. Hope class isn’t cancelled again because I need it!

Sources:

Geisler, Cheryl. "How Ought We to Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency? Report from the ARS." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.3 (2004): 9-17.

Kirkman, Robert, writer. "Here We Remain." The Walking Dead: Book Five. Illustrated by Charlie Adlard. Colored by Cliff Rathburn. Berkeley, CA: Image Comics, Inc., 2011. N.pag.

Lundberg, Christian and Joshua Gunn. "Ouija Board, Are There Any Communications? Agency, Ontotheology, and the Death of the Humanist Subject, or, Continuing the ARS Conversation." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35.4 (2005): 83-105.