'A Kind of Thing That Might Be': Toward A Poetics of New Media Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Thompson, Jason Craig Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 20:28:02 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194959 ‘A KIND OF THING THAT MIGHT BE’: TOWARD A POETICS OF NEW MEDIA by Jason Thompson _____________________ Copyright © Jason Thompson 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2008 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Jason Thompson entitled A Kind of Thing that Might Be: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/07/2008 Ken McAllister _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/07/2008 Theresa Enos _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/07/2008 John Warnock Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: 07/07/2008 Dissertation Director: Ken McAllister 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Jason Thompson 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my family, Nicole and Isabelle, for their patience, love, and goodness; my family in Seattle, for their support and encouragement; and I thank my faraway family in Newnan—a large project such as a dissertation has kept me, in different ways, from the ones that I love, and I look forward to being reunited with everyone. To the faculty at the University of Arizona RCTE program I owe the greatest thanks—to Theresa Enos, for mentoring me in coursework, in my capacity as Assistant Editor at the Rhetoric Review , and in collaborative writing projects; to Ken McAllister, for being a mentor and a friend in and out of class, at conferences and in print; to John and Tilly Warnock, for their generosity of spirit and willingness to talk to me for hours about our mutual friend Kenneth Burke; to Tom Miller, for his constancy; and to Ed White, for his kindness and guidance. Lastly I’d like to thank my friends Jennifer DeWinter and Daniel Griffin for being both friends and professionals who maintain a real sense of intellectual curiosity—we have gathered on Sundays for work/play for nearly three years now through comprehensive exams, dissertation proposals, dissertation writing, the job market, and many conference presentations. I owe you both a great debt, as well as your spouses Aaron McCafferty and Maria Santos. 5 DEDICATION To my wife Nicole, the bravest and the best person I’ve ever known. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS A POETICS AND WHAT IS IT FOR? ...................... 16 Poetics—A Brief History.............................................................................................. 19 The Contradictory Poetics of Plato............................................................................... 19 Aristotle’s Poetics ......................................................................................................... 24 Horace’s Ars Poetica .................................................................................................... 27 [Pseudo-] Longinus On the Sublime ............................................................................. 31 The Continuing Legacy of the Four Poetics ................................................................. 33 Culture—A Definition from Linguistic Anthropology................................................. 36 The Poetics of New Media............................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER TWO: METAPHOR AND NEW MEDIA POETICS: KENNETH BURKE AND THE DRAMATISM OF WWII............................................................ 46 Manovich and New Media............................................................................................ 50 Metaphor and Burkean Terms ...................................................................................... 54 Saving Private Ryan and the “Representative Anecdote” ............................................ 56 Storming the Beach: World War II in Twenty-five Minutes........................................ 58 The Problem of Form.................................................................................................... 61 Medal of Honor: Frontline as seen through the Pentad................................................ 64 “The Naming of Parts”: Burke’s Theory of the Pentad................................................ 66 Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur : Pentadic Gameplay Analysis............................. 69 The Scene/Act Ratio ..................................................................................................... 70 The Agent/Act Ratio..................................................................................................... 71 Bella gerant alii : Problems with This Analysis............................................................ 73 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER THREE: MEMORY IN ENTHYMEMES, MEMORY IN METAPHOR................................................................................................................... 78 The Enthymeme in Rhetoric......................................................................................... 79 Memory and the Enthymeme........................................................................................ 81 Memory and Muses, Passion and Persuasion ............................................................... 86 Enthymemes and the Borrowing Back and Forth......................................................... 89 Memory in Metaphor.................................................................................................... 97 Mediated Enthymemes ............................................................................................... 100 The Manchurian Candidate ........................................................................................ 103 Political Enthymeme in the 1996 Presidential Campaign .......................................... 107 Political Gaffe as Enthymeme Gone Awry................................................................. 109 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 113 CHAPTER FOUR: THE FORFEITURE OF DIRECT MEMORY AND THE CYBORG DREAM....................................................................................................... 114 The Cyborg Dream ..................................................................................................... 116 Origins of Automata in Myth...................................................................................... 118 From Human to the Posthuman: Information Loses Its Body.................................... 120 Kurzweil and the Cyborg Dream ................................................................................ 123 Human Memory is Not Computer Memory ............................................................... 125 Store Your World in Ours®........................................................................................ 126 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS—CONTINUED The Rhetorical Canon of Memory.............................................................................. 130 Two Memory Metaphors: Wax Tablet and Aviary .................................................... 133 The Waxen Block of Memory .................................................................................... 135 The Aviary of Memory............................................................................................... 136 Memory Displaced...................................................................................................... 138 Ramus and Current-Traditionalism ............................................................................ 140 Ramus, the Hermetic