gsouthe's blog

Title Information: Anderson, Dana. Identity’s Strategy: Rhetorical Selves in Conversation. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. 209 pages. ISBN: 978-1570037061. $39.95.

Summary

·       Identity is important to rhetoric not because of what identity “is,” but because of what it can suggest about language’s function in a strategic and generative process.

"Terminator: The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug…because Skynet knows the Russian counterattack will eliminate its enemies over here" (from the film Terminator 2).

"I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark" ("Melinda Moores," The Green Mile).

Question: Dear Professor X, I've now got Burke figured out.  What next?
Answer: Good try.  Have you considered how KB uses mythic and magic to explore situational context?
Response: Dear Professor X, Ummm [head scratch, eye scan the distant horizon seeking help], I'll get back to you on that!"

A thought for the day…

Enclosed please find the wacky...wonky...and woefully underdeveloped introduction to my introduction for my first draft.  Much is NOT included (but, is being added as we "speak").

Thoughts always welcome...and, have I mentioned *rough* draft :)?

Glen Southergill

Professor David Blakesley

RCID813

Spring 2011

Introduction to Veblen’s IWSIA

A highly academic source to which I later refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

The story goes: a famous sculptor (whose name I cannot recall) allegedly (meaning may or may not have) said that s/he created nothing, s/he merely removed the excesses.  By striping (negating: in GM 25) substance unrelated to a finished form, s/he was discerning instead of generating.  And it is, in a sense, the space between potentiality/actuality explored through process of negation that his/her motives were expressed (or, possibly, the motives of the object).

"For mankind as for the other higher animals, the life of the species is conditions by the complement of instinctive proclivities and tropismatic aptitudes with which the species is typically endowed...Human activity, in so far as it can be spoken of as conduct, can never exceed the scope of these instinctive dispositions, by initiative of which man takes action" (Veblen 3).

It is fitting, given certain recent events, that our dialog this week begins with questions of pragmatism.  We (defined as the RCID community) were recently treated to a wonderful talk by Dr. Susanna Ashton concerning her work I Belong to South Carolina: South Carolina Slave Narratives (http://www.amazon.com/Belong-South-Carolina-Slave-Narratives/dp/1570039011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300214643&sr=8-1).

Title Information: Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1996. 212 pages. ISBN: 0-226-45808-3. $7.35.

Summary

·       Science is paradigmatically managed: any sub-discipline operates by receiving beliefs that govern fitting nature to theory (and indoctrinates new members). A field (scientific group) consists of adherents to an existing paradigm.

(note -- this seems to have dropped off my blog; I posted it earlier, but the ghost in the machine took it...so I'm re-posting it now).

Remember to save these two letters, says my predecessor.  Each is for a time in which you, my successor, are in trouble (for you, yes, you, will encountered troubled waters before long).

A sly grin…

The first is opened roughly six months later.  It reads, “blame me.”