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Copyright by Theodore Neal Albiniak 2018 The Dissertation Committee for Theodore Neal Albiniak Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: PLANT FIGURATIONS: A VITAL STUDY IN RHETORICAL ADDRESS FOLLOWING THEODOR W. ADORNO Committee: Joshua Gunn, Supervisor Diane Davis Barry Brummett Scott Stroud PLANT FIGURATIONS: A VITAL STUDY IN RHETORICAL ADDRESS FOLLOWING THEODOR W. ADORNO by Theodore Neal Albiniak Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin February, 2018 Dedication For Teddy and other complex vibrancies Acknowledgements Like the relationships addressed in the following pages, this dissertation would not be possible without the love, support, criticism, and labor of so many different people. Thank you to my advisor, Josh Gunn, for letting me persuade you (against your better judgment) to take on another obnoxious debater and for teaching me how to write thinking with clarity, poetry, and fearlessness; I regret all the commas. Deep thanks and appreciation to my other committee members: Diane Davis (for your seminar in which this was forged), Barry Brummett (for introducing me to Kenneth Burke) and Scott Stroud (who trudged through my first attempt at reading Aristotle with plants). Special thanks to Dana Cloud, Amy Kilgard, and presenters on a fabulous panel at Western States (Joan Faber McAlister, Jaishikha Nautiyal, and Eric O’Connor) for your direct contributions to the ideas developed here. Thanks to Aida Gonzalez, Jennifer Betancourt, and Vicky Lisa Moseley for being the backbone of the department and for all the unacknowledged labor you offer to keep us moving. To Kayla Rhidenour, much thanks, for the years in all the ways. Much appreciation to Claire McKinney for being a wonderful teaching partner and for reading endless early drafts with vigorous attention and sustained interest; #TCE. Special thanks to Tim Sieber, my life brother, for your provocative thinking (especially on the final draft): without your careful prodding in front of the Gannet center so many years ago this may never have been written. To my family—especially Jeff Albiniak, Julie Mies-Rued, and Louise & John Richardson—for your unending reservoir of support and patience with me while I traveled this road. I’m honored and humbled to be this first to cross this line and I hope I v represent you with the honor and dignity that you’ve shown me. And especially to my mom, Connie Neal, for holding space for my tears and laughter and for endless hours reading words that often made no sense. To Alexis Litzky, always and forever, for your partnership across so many domains of this world (and along with Dom Brassey) for planning the wildflower adventure that concretized my thinking. Thank you for helping me stay grounded and for providing a garden of love to help me flourish. Yes! to Kate Litzky for your endless support for the park system and for finding one of the key pieces of the first case study. To all my debate family at Texas and UTNIF: I could never thank you enough for teaching me how to live, learn, and think in the conditions we find and refashion. Thank you to: Joel Rollins for seeing in me something that most people ignored and for being a wonderful mentor; JV Reed for all that you are and offer this world; Brian McBride for training my mind; Orion Steele for demonstrating true partnership; Ralph Paone for your passion; Kirk Evans for illuminating the way; Amber Kelsie for showing how it’s really done; LaToya Green for your strength and support; and to my Kitchen Comrades— Sydney Vanberg and Micheal Stroud—for our cherished table. To all my SF State family and faculty—Christina Sabee, Aliyah Shaheed, Lindsey Ayotte, Pablo Ramirz, Abas Idris, Donna Smith, Heidi Ng, Stacie Guan, and all the forensi-gators—for welcoming me home, again. To Ben Morsa for giving me someone to address and feel addressed by: your world is a gift. Profound and impossible debt offered to Sarah Frank and Maryanne Taylor. Thanks for your camaraderie, intelligence, courage, and dignity. Deeply, truly, and queerly to Laura Brown: Thanks for thinking I was weird too. vi Plant Figurations: A Vital Study in Rhetorical Address following Theodor W. Adorno Theodore Neal Albiniak, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisor: Joshua Gunn In this dissertation, I ask the question: how is (and is not) the plant both subject and object of human rhetoric? In taking up the question, I explore an array of texts, artifacts, and encounters revealing “the plant” addressed as a vital object of subjective experience and as a subject of objective reflection. Following what Diane Davis and Michelle Ballif call “extrahuman rhetorical relations,” I demonstrate an orientation of struggle that holds the question open at its limit, by approaching iterations of “the plant” caught in motion. I apply a method drawn from Frankfurt School scholar Theodor W. Adorno’s invitation to apply negative dialectics—or immanent criticism—to everyday sites of personal encounter and interdisciplinary texts. I understand the dialectic features of human-plant relations in three chapters or figures studies. First, I examine the concept of “natural history” revealed in a site-specific experience at Red Rock State Park in California. Second, I look at the historic and contemporary texts that name a parasitic liana known as the Sipo-Matador. Third, I hear the sounding of European trees emanating through a vinyl copy of the 2012 art-album Years by Bartholomäus Traubeck. Approaching these figures in affirmative and negative modes, I argue that keeping the dialectic in motion instantiates a critical process—a reflection on reflective capacity— across multiple renderings of representation and structure. Writing and reading is an vii essential part of this process. In understanding thinking as a movement of mediation—a dramatic journey joining the dialectic across theoretical abstraction and lived reality—I reveal a multidimensional orientation to rhetorical criticism suited to hear the plant, addressed. My approach, I argue, keeps Adorno and the plant—both subjects and objects of this dissertation—close enough to touch while at bay enough to remain mysterious. I trace a malignant structure surrounding my encounter between the human and the plant— the Enlightenment in its dominating iterations—in relief as much as I hope to leave open creative reflection and vital critique. viii Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW OF LITERATURE ........1 I. Introduction and Definitions .................................................................................7 Bundling the Approach: Defining Rhetoric as Orientation ............................7 Defining the Need: Enlightenment Orientation and Domination .................10 II. Literature Review ..............................................................................................21 Turning Toward Subject ...............................................................................23 Turning Toward the Object ...........................................................................36 Turning Toward a Center: New Materialism ................................................47 Preview of Figure Studies (Chapters) ...........................................................54 CHAPTER TWO: METHOD .............................................................................58 I. A Contemporary Story of Rhetoric ....................................................................61 Brief History of Rhetorical Method ..............................................................61 Ideological Criticism .....................................................................................64 II. The Persistence of the Dialectic ........................................................................68 Applied dialectics ..........................................................................................69 Ancient Origins .............................................................................................74 Kant’s Critique ..............................................................................................76 Hegel’s Influence ..........................................................................................77 Marx’s Revision ............................................................................................81 Adorno on the Dialectic ................................................................................85 III. Immanent Criticism: Steps in Constellations in Orientation ...........................93 Techniques ....................................................................................................97 (A) Pairing of contradicting terms .......................................................97 (B) Dialectic examination in an object or artifact ................................99 (C) Primacy of Object ........................................................................102 ix IV. Figural Plants: An Immanent Critique ...........................................................106 CHAPTER THREE: FIGURING NATURAL HISTORY .............................111 I. Natural History, Introducing an Idea ................................................................113 II. Red Rock Canyon State Park ..........................................................................119 III. Natural History, A Dialectic