Rhetorical Theory

Table of Contents Introduction Act One: AI as Metaphor and Speculative Frame for Procedural Automation (1980s–1990s) From Laboratories to Everyday Life Cultural Imagination: Between Utopian and Dystopian Frames Act Two: The Machine Learning Turn (Mid 1990s–2000s) Agentic Shift From Static Programs to Adaptive Algorithms Illustrative Example: A Machine-Learning Wardrobe Recommender Paradoxes of Machine Learning Footnotes Scene from the 1983 sci-fi thriller WarGames, directed by John Badham. The film dramatizes a near-catastrophe triggered by a military decision to entrust U.S. nuclear deterrence to an autonomous AI system that treats thermonuclear war as a solvable optimization problem. Source: DVDXtras, “WarGames (1983) | Behind the Scenes,” Internet Archive, June 2, 2022. <LINK> *Continuing from: “What Is AI?” Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines In the previous segment of our genealogical survey, we have traced ancient imaginaries that seeded today’s visions of machine intelligence. From Yan Shi’s mechanical performers to Talos’ bronze vigilance and the ritual logic of golems and Homunculi, we explored how mythic prototypes shaped the rhetorical terrain on which “AI” would later emerge as a technological category. Whereas earlier societies used myth and ritual to make sense of uncanny forms of artificial agency and “thinking machines,” in this second part we turn from historical mythologies to present-day technological possibilities. The term “artificial intelligence” circulates in our cultural lifeworld with astonishing fluidity. It appears in commercials, policy reports, sci-fi movies, legal disputes, and everyday conversations. It is used to describe everything from basic computer programs to sophisticated generative models capable of complex knowledge-performance. ...

 Table of Contents What Do You See? Historical "Thickness" of Advertising Demonstrative and Associative Ads Advertising & Consumer Psychology Bandwagon & Anti-Bandwagon Effects Social Marketing & Exploitation Computational Rhetoric of Hyper-Personalization What Do You See? Let’s begin today’s lesson with a quick glance at these sets of images. What do they remind you of? ...

On December 4, 2024, news broke that a lone gunman had assassinated UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive officer, Brian Thompson, outside the company’s headquarters.1 The killing itself was shocking, but what unsettled many observers was the wave of sympathy that quickly coalesced around the perpetrator—donations, online tributes, and statements of support that revealed a raw seam in America’s collective experience of health care.2 This dramatic act of killing is entangled with the dark trajectory in the devolution of the marketized healthcare industry in the United States: normalizing traumatic acts of takings, with increasingly unsustainable industry practices justifying the suspension of pre-existing taboos concerning the sanctity of life and the boundaries of wealth transfer.3 ...

Originally posted by: Keren Wang, Fall 2024 Table of Contents Ideological Criticism - Overview Key Perspectives from Ideological Criticism Economic Inequality and False Consciousness Hegemony and Mythologies Psychoanalytic Criticism - Overview The Unconscious Id, Ego, and Superego Defense Mechanisms and Complexes References Ideological Criticism - Overview Ideological criticism is a method of analyzing texts and other rhetorical artifacts to uncover the underlying ideologies that shape and are reflected in them. This type of criticism is often used to explore how media, literature, and other forms of communication reinforce or challenge dominant social, political, and economic power structures. ...

The ritual taking of things that are of human value, including the ritual killing of humans, has been continuously practiced for as long as human civilization itself has existed. In my presentation for the upcoming virtual 2020 National Communication Association's Annual Convention, I will highlight key findings from one of my ongoing historical archival projects, focusing on the rhetoric of human sacrifice as represented in Early Bronze Age China oracle bone scripts (c.1250 BC - 1046 BC). It will be delivered at the virtual paper session, "GPS: Changing Routes in Rhetoric's History" sponsored by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric on November 1st, 2020. ...

(December 2nd, 2019) I am very pleased to announce that my academic monograph with Routledge | Taylor & Francis Group has now been published: Keren Wang, Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism. It is available in both hardback and digital formats. This book was developed from my doctoral dissertation, “Three Studies of Ritual Sacrifice in Late Capitalism.” I would like to extend my special thanks to Stephen H. Browne, my dissertation supervisor, and to members of my dissertation advising committee: Larry Catá Backer, Kirt H. Wilson, and Jeremy David Engels. This project would not have been possible without their guidance and mentorship. I would also like to express my gratitude to members of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University for their generous, ongoing support of my Ph.D. study and related postdoctoral research. ...

This presentation highlights a few key excerpts from my doctoral dissertation research: “The ritual taking of things that are of human value, including the ritual killing of humans, has been continuously practiced for as long as human civilization itself has existed. Sacrifices in the form of state-organized rituals have been observed in many societies throughout history. Existing scholarship also observed an interdependent relationship between ritual sacrifice and the maintenance of political power in a broad set of historical cases, ranging from Shang dynasty China in 10th century BCE to the witch-hunts in early modern Europe. Sacrificial rituals of the past should not be considered fundamentally divorced from our modern world: whereas the formal elements of sacrifice of the past may no longer be recognizable, their substantive political functions do remain, with rhetorical overtones that carry into the politics of the present time. The goal for this project is to give due consideration to the politics of sacrificial rites across a broad set of political-theological traditions, hopefully paving the way to a new unifying understanding of sacrificial rhetorics. This research goal revolves around two primary research tasks that are intimately connected. The first is to provide a working interpretative framework for understanding the politics of ritual sacrifice – one that not only accommodates multidisciplinary, intersectional knowledge of ritual practices, but that can also be usefully employed in the integrated analysis of sacrificial rituals as political rhetoric under divergent historical and societal contexts. The second conducts a series of case studies that cuts across the wide variability of ritual public takings in late-capitalism.” ...