WRITING, PLACE, NETWORK: SCALE AND DIGITAL RHETORIC By MADISON P. JONES A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2020 © 2020 Madison P. Jones To Jane, my network ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Sid Dobrin for his constant encouragement, enduring patience, thoughtful feedback, and mentoring. His advice to graduate students at orientation was to get out and explore the areas around Gainesville, and following that advice brought me to this project. Raúl Sánchez always asked the toughest questions and challenged me to dig deeper into the theory. Anastasia Ulanowicz helped me to clarify my project and refine my prose. I am also grateful to Robert Walker, who led me to Howard T. Odum’s work and encouraged my interdisciplinary interests in ecology and geography and to Cynthia Barnett who taught me much about Florida’s important role in the history of environmentalism and showed me how great teachers can take learning beyond the traditional borders of the classroom. I am so fortunate to have undertaken this research alongside my colleagues in the TRACE Innovation Lab, especially Jacob Greene, Aaron Beveridge, and Shannon Butts, who have read more than their share of my drafts, who helped me make my way through many meandering paths of thought, and who guided me through the rocky parts of this study. Thank you to Sean Morey and to John Tinnell, who blazed the trail and offered support and advice along the way. Thank you to Lee Rozelle, who has supported me since I was a budding ecocritic. I am so grateful to my father who taught me everything I know about trees and hard work and my mother who taught me to proofread and showed me what it means to be a teacher. Most of all, I would like to thank Jane, who challenges, encourages, and supports me always. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................9 (Re)Placing Scale: A Networked Methodology .....................................................................12 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................................22 Elsewhere ................................................................................................................................26 2 WRITING CONDITIONS: THE PREMISES OF ECOCOMPOSITION .............................28 Placing Ecocomposition .........................................................................................................29 The Premises of Writing .........................................................................................................35 Chora, Kairos, and Regionalist Rhetoric ................................................................................41 Choric Environments ..............................................................................................................48 Solonist Ecocomposition ........................................................................................................51 Rhetorical Wayfaring ..............................................................................................................55 Prescribed Burn ......................................................................................................................61 3 PALIMPSEST NETWORKS: GHOST BIKES AND DIGITAL-MATERIAL WRITING ...............................................................................................................................63 Publics and the Ecologies of Place .........................................................................................65 Pedestrian Rhetorics ...............................................................................................................67 MEmorials ..............................................................................................................................68 Chora and Place ......................................................................................................................71 Vélorutionaries and Petroculture ............................................................................................74 Petro-Armor ............................................................................................................................77 Visual Rhetorics of Place ........................................................................................................79 Intersections of Petroculture ...................................................................................................82 Racial Rhetorics of Space .......................................................................................................86 Disembodied Rhetorics ...........................................................................................................90 Augmented Publics .................................................................................................................92 Anthropocene ..........................................................................................................................93 4 SPRINGS OF INSPIRATION: THE RHETORICAL ENERGY OF PLACE ......................95 Rhetorical Energy .................................................................................................................100 Ecosystems Ecology and Ecocomposition ...........................................................................101 Florida Out of Place ..............................................................................................................107 Rhetorical Naturecultures .....................................................................................................113 5 Monumental Publics .............................................................................................................118 Constellating Place ...............................................................................................................121 Florida Terroir ......................................................................................................................124 Silver Springs........................................................................................................................126 5 SYLVAN RHETORICS: ROOTS AND BRANCHES OF MORE-THAN-HUMAN NETWORKS ........................................................................................................................127 Dead Wood: New Material for Rhetorical Theory ...............................................................129 Strange Encounters with Rhetorics .......................................................................................133 More-Than-Human Publics ..................................................................................................137 Sylvan Rhetorics ...................................................................................................................141 The Forest of Rhetoric ..........................................................................................................144 High Rise ..............................................................................................................................148 6 CONCLUSION: PLACING POSTDIGITAL WRITING ....................................................150 Writing in the Shade .............................................................................................................151 The Postdigital Writing Classroom ......................................................................................156 Pastoral .................................................................................................................................160 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................161 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................176 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy WRITING, PLACE, NETWORK: SCALE AND DIGITAL RHETORIC By Madison P. Jones May 2020 Chair: Sidney I. Dobrin Major: English While writing takes place in networks which are always evolving, rhetoric and writing studies has traditionally engaged with place through the static and fixed models of Aristotelian commonplace topoi. In the face of large-scale environmental problems and with the rise of mobile writing technologies such as smartphones, this project argues that further attention should be paid by writing studies scholars to place as a network. Networked writing undercuts scalar definitions of place and it underwrites distinctions between local and global. Alongside a growing number of scholars who are reshaping the relationship between place and networked writing technologies, this project turns to the role of scale in shaping how place is imagined topologically. This project argues that topological structures for place are not sufficient, and argues for a choric and networked model