Rhetoric Society Quarterly Mar 2023

Thinking Like a Copper Mine: An Ecological Approach to Corporate Ethos and Prosōpon

Nicholas S. Paliewicz

Abstract

This essay uses Aldo Leopold’s essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” as a heuristic for analyzing the rhetorical processes of erasure that have created one of the largest open pit copper mines on the planet: The Bingham Canyon Mine (BCM). Contributing to studies of corporate rhetoric, persona criticism, and nonhuman agencies, I argue that the BCM, and its corporate owner Rio Tinto, is characteristic of Being-in-the-Anthropocene and informs rhetoricians about our extra-human ethos, or manner of dwelling, as an entwinement with corporate actors. Taking Rio Tinto as a synecdoche for corporate personhood and persona (prosōpon), I make the case for an ecological approach to corporate disclosedness that accounts for the earthly resources of corporate rhetorical invention (e.g., copper). Through the later work of Martin Heidegger, I show how the BCM has become a standing reserve within a corporate world picture that is rhetorically apparent in the rhetorical architecture of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2023-03-15
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2022.2129757
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Topics
rhetorical criticism argument
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