ABSTRACT Despite seemingly broad acceptance within rhetorical theory, the category of the unconscious has remained understudied and misunderstood ever since Kenneth Burke first appropriated the concept from psychoanalysis, and his unquestioned commitment to conventional anthropocentric binaries continues to obscure the role and function of the unconscious within communication into this century. Offering a corrective reanalysis of the Freudian apparatus for contemporary rhetoricians, this article shows where Burke went wrong in his early encounter with psychoanalysis and suggests a vital alternative approach in the cybernetic recasting of Jacques Lacan, which suggests the possibility of an unconscious without Dramatism’s traditional humanist assumptions. In a lateral turn bringing this imagined dialogue between Burke and Lacan into our era, the article demonstrates how a Lacan-inflected posthumanist revision of rhetoric’s unconscious is better suited to address contemporary issues of mediated communication, such as the pedagogical import of AI and ChatGPT.

This article responds to the global resurgence of nationalist rhetoric, forgoing prior scholarship’s equation of such rhetoric with demagoguery to instead position nationalism as a form of social organization within shifting rhetorical contexts. Using the framework of constitutive rhetoric, the article shows how material changes in our routine discursive infrastructure impact the ability of people to imagine themselves as composing a unified community. Following the digital revolution, nationalism now reflects its technological basis, a transformation that upends traditional forms of identification and leads to what the author dubs “late nationalism,” a reactionary turn that has exacerbated global crises.