Rhetorical Mechanics

Author:

Kulchar, Douglas Alan

Graduate Program:

English

Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

Document Type:

Dissertation

Date of Defense:

June 15, 2022

Committee Members:

Janet Wynne Lyon, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Daniel Susser, Outside Unit & Field Member
Claire Colebrook, Major Field Member
Richard Doyle, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jeffrey Nealon, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor

Keywords:

Rhetoric
Cybernetics
Plato
Sellars
Deleuze
Sophist

Abstract:

This dissertation attempts a conceptual foundation for rhetorical studies by grounding it in the concept of persuasion, which I understand as the efforts of agents making and comparing measurements of their environment in a shared space of reasons. Central to this project is the social epistemology of American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, as well as the mathematical field of Measure Theory, which variously has applications in theorizations of information, statistical mechanics, and topology. I argue for the introduction of these useful theories of inference to rhetorical studies, but I do so by connecting them to existing research on epistemic rhetoric and the Aristotelian roots of the discipline. Individual chapters offer particular conditions of possibility for rhetoric, focusing on characterizing the limits, dynamics, and necessary conditions of rhetorical situations. The topics of these investigations include Shannon entropy, systems theory, induction, thermodynamics, and Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Plato’s relationship to the Sophists. In this sense, the goal is to clarify how rhetoric and inference structure knowledge by taking seriously the notion that “everything is rhetorical”.