Fourteen years after the special issue on neuroscience and rhetoric in this journal (Neurorhetorics, vol. 40, no. 5), we turn back and look forward. We assess what has been accomplished in neurorhetorics in that time frame, examine what has changed in rhetorical studies and in the neurosciences, and offer suggestions for future research. Eight contributors detail the importance of neurorhetorics for their work and engage a range of topics. Those include neurodiversity, neuropolicy, neurogastronomy, and interdisciplinary collaborations, among others. Ultimately, the forum points toward the need for more critical cultural approaches in neurorhetorics, more policy discussions, new methodologies, and new philosophies that can stretch beyond the “neuro-” prefix and enroll insights from New Materialisms and Global Rhetorics.

As this article argues, a systematic approach to WAC/WID work that conceptualizes interdisciplinary interaction as a deliberative argument (rather than a benign collaboration) benefits all aspects of a WAC/WID program, in particular projects involving writing and other disciplinary faculty. Our approach builds from scholarship that highlights the distinction between “adversarial” and “collaborative” deliberation, in particular the work of Patricia Roberts-Miller and the foundational rhetoric theories of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. After laying out the contours of our approach, the article details a recent not-quite-successful attempt at interdisciplinary collaboration. In documenting this example, we illustrate that a systematic focus on combining adversarial and collaborative deliberation can prevent common pitfalls of writing scholars working with other disciplinary faculty, including the problems that arise when writing is considered ancillary to disciplinary “content.” In this sense, our example highlights the deliberative missteps that our approach is precisely designed to prevent.

This article uses systems and complexity theory to illustrate key characteristics of writing as a complex system. This illustration reveals how writing works on multiple levels of scale, and adds to the body of theoretical knowledge that can be taught within the discipline of writing studies. In so doing, it shows how a complex systems writing pedagogy can benefit both researchers and students.

Rhetoric-composition's recurring captivation with emergent brain research is sustained not only by the persuasive visual rhetoric of neuroscientific research but also by the conceptual and terministic overlaps that exist between the fields of rhetoric-composition and neuroscience. While these overlaps suggest ways research in brain science can usefully contribute to work in our field, they also instigate seductively simple “solutions” to the “problem” of epistemological uncertainty. Our neurorhetorical methodology preempts the reductive uptake of neuroscientific research while simultaneously motivating a cross-disciplinary reciprocity conducive to the goals of rhetorical inquiry and responsible writing pedagogy.