In light of my last blog post, I am compelled to write about
something dear to my heart: the Georgia Bulldogs and specifically, the rhetoric
of the Bulldog community. This past Saturday, the Dawgs played for the SEC
championship and lost (sadly). As I was reading this articles throughout the
weekend, I thought about the hype surrounding the words that often surface
during heated college football games. My newsfeed on Facebook has been filled
with pride, nostalgia and even outright hostility toward one team or the other.
Allegiances are drawn as students, alumni and fans rally together and provide
(often unnecessary) commentary over an issue they cannot control. Because of
this, I thought to myself: Who has agency in this situation?
From Kennedy, we learn a few things about rhetoric:
“rhetoric is a defense mechanism,” “rhetoric is expressive of the integrity of
the individual,” and humans “share a ‘deep’ universal rhetoric” with animals
(10, 6). Kennedy sees the basic means of rhetoric as a way of survival, which is
why people and animals alike have the capacity to communicate (20). I thought
this generalizing of rhetoric was interesting to read about especially in lieu
of the other articles that talk about humans versus objects/things/technology.
With those ideas in mind, I’d like to focus on the last two
articles: Bay/Rickert and Gries. Bay and Rickert discuss Heidegger’s idea of
the fourfold-earth, sky, divinities, and mortals and how these entities relate
to each other (209). The authors argue for a new way of allowing “things” to
have agency—not just humans. They emphasize that “we will remain caught in
technology’s sway until such time as we can attune ourselves to how new media,
and not solely human being, afford other ways of being-in-the-world” (215). In
this sense, humans and things are connected in a way that allows agency to fall
on both groups.
They use Facebook as an example to show the technology
itself creates “community, competition, affection, sociability, thought…” 232).
Humans have now become “co-dwellers” with things, which calls for a shared
sense of responsibility for any given rhetorical situation. People feel
connected through this force. I witnessed this after the game when my Facebook
friends kept re-posting a video that showed students welcoming the Bulldogs
back to Athens (currently with 4, 604 shares). A sense of unity and pride formed as phrases such as “Dawg ‘til
I die!” and “It will always be great to be a GA Bulldog!” kept showing up with
the video.
If rhetorical responsibility should be shared, what will
that mean for the future of rhetoric? Laurie Gries asks that same question and
pushes for rhetorical actancy. She
makes this statement: “Agency is a distributed process that emerges out of
fluctuating intra-actions between agents, human or nonhuman” (77). The future
of agency will depend on our further understanding of how humans and things
weave in and out of each other. Right now, it is clear that we use and depend
on technology to connect people and rally them together. That idea was solidified
for me after witnessing the way a social network became the perfect rhetorical
outlet to express emotion, attempt to persuade (and refute) others, or just say
something. In answer to the question I posed, I have no idea. I guess only
further research will tell.
Oh yeah, Go Dawgs!
Such a passionate post, Stephanie! Love your school spirit for your Alma mater. You pose some interesting rhetorical questions, and your arguments fit nicely with those from the readings. Agency and technology are working hand-in-hand here.
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