Embodying Turing’s Machine: Queer, Embodied Rhetorics in the History of Digital Computation

Rhetoric Review Jan 2018

Embodying Turing’s Machine: Queer, Embodied Rhetorics in the History of Digital Computation

Patricia Fancher University of California, Santa Barbara

Abstract

Although Alan Turing has been cast as a thinker who separates mind and body, this article approaches his technical writing anew through the theoretical lenses of embodied rhetoric and queer rhetoric. Alan Turing’s technical and theoretical writings are shown to be lively with embodied, gendering, and queer rhetoric. This article also argues that queer, embodied experiences ground Turing’s contributions toward early digital computation. Turing’s rhetoric resists norms in technical communication that expect stable and complete knowledge. Instead, Turing is an outlier who reminds us that queer, embodied rhetorics can complicate and expand our understanding of technical and scientific communication.

Journal: Rhetoric Review
Published: 2018-01-02
DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2018.1395268
Open Access: Closed
Topics: body and rhetoric

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

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