Randy Allen Harris
9 articles-
Sex after Technology: The Rhetoric of Health Monitoring Apps and the Reversal of <i>Roe v. Wade</i> ↗
Abstract
The convergence of artificial intelligence technologies with the growth of Christo-fascist movements in the United States presents an alarming threat to women's health, especially considering known privacy violations by the major players—all in the shadow of the US Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade. These violations are ethotic; that is, they betray information that has been mined algorithmically to construct "user models," bits and pieces of which are sold or otherwise circulated without true "user" consent or cooperation. Such models are best understood as algorithmic ethopoeia, mathematized representations of individuals charted as matrices of commodified categories for commercial trafficking, but also for politicians and law enforcement. Taking inspiration from abolitionist tools for resisting intersectional racism, and incorporating data feminism, we offer six categories of design heuristics to respect and maintain ethopoeic integrity, especially in the domain of women's health in a post-Roe technological landscape, using a fundamental rhetorical concept to serve designers, as well as critics and activists.
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Abstract
I argue for the importance of rhetorical schemes for understanding, diagnosing, and coping with forms of dementia. Schemes give salience (recruit attention), memorability (affect storage and facilitate retrieval), and aesthetic effects (induce a pleasurable emotional response) to configurations of language. They do so because of the way they play to neurocognitive pattern biases, like repetition, sequence, and position. Dementia is a condition under which language use degrades, alongside memory and attention, but pattern biases appear to remain and schemic configurations become more and more frequent in dementia speech. Rhetorical schemes, that is, are notably resilient to the forces that diminish language use in dementia.
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A Review of:<i>The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts</i>, by Deanna D. Sellnow ↗
Abstract
Deanna Sellnow's new textbook is Brummett-lite, equal parts rhetorical theory sampler and criticism handbook for popular culture. In both of these parts, it is a valuable book to teach from, with s...
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Abstract
This long overdue translation of Dan Sperber's 1975 paper, “Rudiments de rhetorique cognitive,” beyond its sheer quality of thought, is important for three specific reasons. One is simple priority....
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Abstract
This article encourages the increased attention to issues of reception in rhetoric of science, according with the sentiment but not the argument of Paul, Charney, and Kendall's "Moving beyond the Moment." In particular, it offers two works as exemplary of the disciplinary maturity that has occasioned this focus on reception, Ceccarelli's monograph, Shaping Science with Rhetoric, and Harris's collection, Rhetoric and Incommensurability.
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Abstract
Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus Marketplace and the Clipper Chip by Laura Gurak. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. 181 pp. Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work by Jane Maher. Urbana: NCTE, 1997. 331 pp. Rhetoric and Pluralism: Legacies of Wayne Booth, edited by Frederick J. Antczak. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1995. 335 pp. Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction by Jonathan Potter. London: SAGE Publications, 1996. The Emperor's New Clothes: Literature, Literacy, and the Ideology of Style by Kathryn T. Flannery. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. 240 pp.
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Abstract
The Rhetoric of Science by Alan G. Gross. Harvard UP, 1990; pp. vi +248