Clemson University TigerPrints All Dissertations Dissertations 5-2016 An Enfolding and Fertile Abyss: Rhetoric as the Creative Becoming of Biological Life Haylee Renee Zertuche Clemson University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations Recommended Citation Zertuche, Haylee Renee, "An Enfolding and Fertile Abyss: Rhetoric as the Creative Becoming of Biological Life" (2016). All Dissertations. 1663. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/1663 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AN ENFOLDING AND FERTILE ABYSS: RHETORIC AS THE CREATIVE BECOMING OF BIOLOGICAL LIFE A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design by Hayley Renee Zertuche May 2016 Accepted by: Dr. Cynthia Haynes, Committee Chair Dr. Sean Morey Prof. Christina Hung Dr. Margaret Ptacek Dr. Luanne Frank ABSTRACT This dissertation seeks traces of enfolding corporeal paths within the ontological, epistemological, ethical abyss separating “Human” and “Animal.” The “question of the animal,” as it is often called, is currently en vogue within a larger ecological movement in the humanities. I seek to extend this engagement with “animality” beyond rhetoric, literature, and philosophy by enfolding the sciences and arts as well for a deeper understanding of humans as animals and therefore, I argue, as rhetorical life. This path of the HumAnimal emerges with a diffractive reading of new material feminism, evolutionary biology, contemporary art practices, and visual rhetorics, and in doing so, theorizes a definition of rhetoric that is prior to intention, consciousness, and mind. I argue that rhetoric is instead present at the origins, struggles, and flourishings of life itself. Rhetoric becomes a process, a movement, and a biological becoming that emerges in nonlinear and discontinuous ways, illuminating the dark abyssal waters in which humanimals and animals are mutually and materially enfolded. Given the ethical implications of our entanglements with the world, this dissertation further argues for a different way of looking with animals in visual culture. The representationalist looking that places animals at a distance and visually grasps them is demonstrated with contemporary examples of viral memes as well as the destructive human-animal interactions practiced for capturing selfies and “cute” photographs. These animals are but objects grasped by human eyes across a staggering ontological divide. I turn to Heidegger’s Parmenides to theorize ii an encountering, being-enabling look for animals in visual culture that ontologically entangles humanimals and animals in the looking relation. Such an encountering look simultaneously brings forth an awareness of one’s own being such that the abyssal requisites for self and other, subject and object, human and animal are compromised. An encountering look is essentially a phenomenological awareness of entanglement. These alternative practices of looking become the basis for a HumAnimal rhetorics and pedagogy. iii DEDICATION for Eric, Enzo, Myla, and Iris iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation project is a condensation of so many entanglements. First, I wish to thank Cynthia Haynes for helping me bring this project into the world, for her mentorship and friendship, and for her beautiful words that continue to inspire me. My committee members are folded within these pages as well. Thank you Margaret Ptacek, Sean Morey, Christina Hung, and Luanne Frank for the discussions and ideas that have helped shape this project. I must express my gratitude to Victor J. Vitanza for his mentorship, much needed atopos, and for the Society of the Third Sophistic, which has become a dear family of scholars. I am also grateful to my cohort for their contributions, challenges, laughter, and friendship. Special thanks are extended to Steve Katz, Matthew Osborn, Data Canlas, and Mari Ramler for the stimulating conversations and for “seeing me,” which is a rare thing indeed. I would not have embarked upon this journey (nor would I have survived it) without my family. This is a story about them: Eric Zertuche, Pam Bradshaw, Randy Klepsteen, Hilary Klepsteen, Hannah Glaub, and Abel and Juanita Zertuche. Thank you all for your patience and support. I am constantly inspired by Eric and the three beings who have emerged from our friendship: Enzo, Myla, and Iris. Their laughter, tears, sticky hands, tugs, sicknesses, and joy are enfolded within these pages. v Thank you also to Memphis, Meadow, Beef, Mose, Millie, and all of the foster dogs who have profoundly touched our lives. They have changed me with their incandescent and infinite love, for which there simply is no equivalent. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the deeply personal deaths and births that have occurred over the life of this project. These are the wounds and joys that haunt my words and make this dissertation so dear to me. I am grateful to have known you all; I carry you with me. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................................................................. i ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................................ v LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER I. HUMANIMAL ................................................................................................................................ 1 The Human|Animal Abyss .................................................................................................... 3 Rhetorical (Hum)Animals .................................................................................................... 7 Entangled Materialities ......................................................................................................... 12 Why HumAnimal Rhetorics?: Becoming-With Plastic ............................................. 22 II. RHETORICAL BECOMINGS: SEX, SYMBIOSIS, AND SPONTANEOUS ORGANIZATION .......................................................................................................................... 31 An Adaptive Rhetoric ............................................................................................................. 37 Sex ................................................................................................................................................... 45 Symbiosis ..................................................................................................................................... 58 Origins ........................................................................................................................................... 64 III. THE ABYSS .................................................................................................................................... 74 Abyssal Looking ........................................................................................................................ 78 What Can Contemporary Art Add? ................................................................................... 97 IV. HAUNTINGS .................................................................................................................................. 104 Shining-Into ................................................................................................................................ 107 The Dead and Dying Eye ....................................................................................................... 116 The Unseeing Eye ..................................................................................................................... 131 V. DEEPENING .................................................................................................................................. 142 vii Table of Contents (Continued) Page Earth ................................................................................................................................................ 145 Digging ............................................................................................................................................ 154 Sea ..................................................................................................................................................... 166 NOTES ............................................................................................................................................................ 177 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................................ 189 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Swan X-Ray of abdominal foreign bodies via