From Epigram to Hologram and other Transhumanities: Post Structuralist Rhetorical Practices

Professors Doyle/Nealon/Nealon/Doyle

English 597

Spring 2009

http://biotelemetrica.pbwiki.com/PostStructuralistRhetoricalPractices

Alternative Course Description Here: http://biotelemetrica.pbwiki.com/CourseDescriptionRhetoric

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God, and the Word was with God. John 1:1

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. Vannevar Bush, \"As We May Think\"

Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin. Wiliam S. Burroughs

From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs.Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

Are you intrigued by the historic and historical convergence of information technologies, cultural studies and rhetoric? Large scale changes in the way human beings collect, compose, decompose, share and analyze information such as the Semantic Web ( Web 2.0) push both scholars and practicioners toward comprehending "rhetoric" as a logic of the multitude taking in multiple and emergent "biomedia" rather than the usual zoology of "audiences" "books" and "writers." This course will offer a historical and rhetorical framework for inhabiting and responding to these digital transhumanities by situating the emergence of "post structuralist" discourses within the technological and historical transformations in which they emerged.