Ede, Glenn and Lunsford encourage readers to combine rhetoric and feminism, using each to help further understand the other. “rhetoric offers feminism a vibrant process of inquiring, organizing, and thinking, as well as a theorized space to talk about effective communication; feminism offers rhetoric a reason to bridge differences, to include, and to empower, as well as a politicized space to discuss rhetorical values” (401). The authors organized their article through the rhetorical canons. First, they assert that memory and invention are linked. For instance, there is a connection “between inquiring (inventio) and knowing (memoria)” (410). Also, in order to invent new arguments, examples and so on, we need to go into our memories. Furthermore, “invention and memory constrain and shape both who can know and what can be known” (411). They suggest what counts as knowledge and who is allowed to hold, shape, and convey this knowledge. “Feminist efforts…aim to expose the political and ideological assumptions that inevitably inform any act of invention and memory” (412). In terms of arrangement, feminism helps us analyze classical rhetoric’s push for linear, unemotional, and leading toward closure type of arrangement and offers additional arrangements that encourage dialogue, personal and passionate examples, and an open-endedness. The same is true of style; feminism can help “resist traditional western stylistic conventions of unity, coherence, linearity, and closure and…challenge traditional distinctions between poetry and prose” (426). Finally, feminism shows that delivery “is utterly dependent on one crucial item: access not only to the conventions regarding delivery but also to the system of delivery itself” (430). In the end, “rhetoric offers a rich conceptual framework and terminology that could prove heuristic as feminists attempt to probe and articulate these and other concerns” (440).
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Brooke argues that “a focus on technology requires critical attention to rhteroic as well” (6), se he focuses on the canons. He states that “new media challenges us to reconcieve our basic unit of analysis; the mutability of new media interfaces… As helpful as the canons can be for understanding new media, however, it is equally important to acknowledge the degree to which new media can help us rethink the canons” (6-7). Brooke advocates for a shift from studying text to studying interface in order to avoid applying the logic and theory of old(er) media to new media. For example, applying hypertext theory/practice to a traditional essay only hampers the text and does not offer a comprehensive understanding the way the new media operates: “A rhetoric of new media, rather than examining the choices that have already been made by writers, should prepare us to as writers to make our own choices” (15).
“Ecologies are vast, hybrid systems of intertwined elements, systems where small changes can have unforeseen consequences that ripple far beyond their immediate implications. This means that we much begin to rethink notions of rhetorical effectiveness – whether defined in terms of persuasion, identification, or some other activity – because what is ‘effective’ at one scale or location within an ecology may fail utterly in another context” (28). Ecologies also help us break out of tendencies to view the canons are distinct, stable categories. Brooke recommends looking at three levels of ecologies: ecologies of code, ecologies of practice, and ecologies of culture. Ecologies of code are “the varied communicative and expressive resources we draw on when we produce discourse, regardless of the medium” (48). The ecology of practice “implies conscious, direct activity, the explicit combination of elements from the ecology of code to produce a particular discursive effect” (49). Ecologies of culture “operates at the broadest range of scales, from interpersonal relationships and local discourse communities to regional, national, and even global cultures. Any act of discourse is going to be consumed in various ways by cultural assumptions” (49). Brooke argues that “the most important changes wrought with and by new media are changes in our ecologies of practice” (47). Focusing on practice encourages us not to name specific practices, but instead to think about how practices changes as technology does (196). He renames the canons, and states that “each of the canons can be described as an ecology, a complex system of people, sties, practices, and objects; taken together, the canons form what I am describing as an ecology of practice” (52).
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