From Literacy to Electracy: Resistant Rhetorical Bodies in Digital Spaces
For many centuries, rhetoric was understood as an exclusively linguistic practice, whether in the form of spoken or written language. However, scholars and rhetoricians, such as Debra Hawhee, Karyn Hollis, and Cheryl Forbes have begun to turn their attention to non-traditional rhetorics. While these non-traditional studies include object-oriented or animal rhetorics, I am interested in the shift toward rhetoric as just as much of an embodied, as it is linguistic practice. Debra Hawhee, Professor at Pennsylvania State University and leader in the shift toward non-traditional rhetorics, attests to rhetoric as an embodied practice in “Bodily Pedagogies: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Sophists’ Three Rs,” in which she re-imagines classical rhetoric as an embodied practice by comparing rhetorical and athletic training (141). She argues, “From this spatial intermingling of practices [she refers to the classical gymnasium in which young males were athletically trained and also made into citizen subjects through rhetorical training] there emerged a curious syncretism between athletics and rhetoric, a particular crossover in pedagogical practices and learning styles, a cross-over that contributed to the development of rhetoric as body art: an art learned, practiced, and performed by and with the body as well as the mind” (Hawhee 144). While Hawhee uses the example of athletic training to examine the pedagogy of rhetoric as an embodied experience, I look to the way that the body both points out and subverts the social and cultural normativities that are imposed on it. I also explore these two types of bodily rhetoric, which I refer to as the “written on” and “speaking” body in the context of both physical and digital spaces. Please see the following video in which I explore examples that demonstrate the rhetorical body primarily in physical spaces.
The previous video explored the ways that the rhetoric was an embodied practice in physical spaces. Physical spaces are associated with the age of literacy as is charted above. According to Ulmer in “The Learning Screen,” “When the Greeks invented alphabetic writing they were engaged in a civilizational shift from one apparatus to another (from orality to literacy). They invented not only alphabetic writing but also a new institution (School) within which the practices of writing were devised.” Along with this shift to literacy, Ulmer argues, an ideological shift occurred from religion to science. Ulmer argues that we are currently experiencing a second civilizational shift: from literacy to electracy. Ulmer notes that electracy took what worked best from orality and literacy and synthesized them. More specifically, Ulmer explains that electracy is “an apparatus, or social machine, partly technological, partly institutional” (3). The vehicle by which the “social machine” of electracy carries out its ideologies and practices is new media technologies. He goes on to say that electracy adds a new dimensions of “thought, identity, and practice” to the previous models of orality and literacy. The processes of “thought, identity, and practice” that populate electracy take place in digital spaces. These new beliefs, values, and practices are illustrated in the chart above.
Note that the “behavior” of electracy is “play” and that the “ground” of electracy is “body.” I interpret this to mean that in electracy, users can play on the ground of their bodies. That is, they have the ability to morph, distort, construct, and deconstruct their own identities as they please with the aid of new media technologies like those that I mentioned above. Users of social media can use a similar technique of juxtaposition and synthesis by presenting their bodies online in new ways. I will later refer to the intermingling of the behavior (play) and ground (body) of electracy as the embodied rhetoric that works to negate normativites and limits that socioculturally imposed on the body, especially in physical spaces, or the “speaking body.”
Bodies rhetorically work to both expose and resist cultural normativities imposed on the body in the ages of both literacy and electracy. I refer to instances that people use their body exposes cultural normativities that are imposed on it by societal expectations or restrictions as the “written on” body. I refer to to instances that people change or morph their body in order to resist these normativities as the “speaking body.” The body in digital spaces can work toward social justice ends by both exposing the ways in which the body is regulated by social and cultural normativities in physical spaces, and then by using new media technology to interrupt and resist these notions. As the examples I will use illustrate, the technology associated with the age of electracy opens up new opportunities for resisting cultural normativities by changing or morphing one’s bodily existence.
In this project, you will notice a video and corresponding textual explication demonstrating the way that the “written on” body operates in digital spaces which appear in apparatuses of electracy. Lastly, you will notice a video of textual explication of the “speaking body” in the age of electracy. I will also theorize about the significance of the change in bodily rhetoric from literacy to electracy and note the possibilities for social justice that have emerged from the apparatuses and technologies of electracy.
The Written on Body in Electracy
In the introductory video we saw examples of how embodied rhetoric was used to point out or bring to awareness the normativites imposed on the body. We noticed that certain bodily forms and identities were socially accepted, whereas others were shunned. People used apparatuses of literacy, such as written text, to bring these social constructions to light. However, in the transition from literacy to electracy, we see new forms of embodied rhetoric that work to expose social constructions and boundaries. However, the rhetoric of the “written on” body in digital spaces is enabled through the technologies and apparatuses of electracy, such as videography and photography. For example, the video showed an example of the Romanian photographer Mihaela Noroc project called The Atlas of Beauty in which Noroc travels the world photographing women’s bodies and faces in various countries. Her goal in doing so is to celebrate physical and cultural diversity by broadcasting the vast and different faces of women from around the world. Noroc photographs the “written on” body by documenting the way that global norms reflect on the ground of women’s bodies and on the stage of new media technologies. Another example from the video that reflects bodily rhetoric in a global context is the photography project documenting gender equality around the world as a way to bring the lack of gender equality in the U.S. to fruition and thus, exposing the way that the body is marginalized, categorized, and restricted based off of anatomical characteristics. Both the photography projects about gender equality and beauty demonstrate the global audience that the apparatuses of electracy allow for, more so than the technologies of literacy did. In the age of electracy, forms of rhetoric such as those shown in the examples are both about and reach people on a global scale. This element of electracy allows for more a broader audience to be exposed to view points and cultures other than their own. This act of examining a more global audience can work to expose the injustices and restrictions put on bodies in certain locations, perhaps by showing occupants of that space bodies in other spaces in the world that do not operate under that restriction, such as the photography project about gender equality worked to show the U.S. bodies of children that are not socialized in a culture in which gender is set up in a format of binaries. The movement from literacy to electracy enables a new kind of rhetoric for the written on body by illuminating a global audience and exposing users of new media technologies to spaces and bodies that are, unlike their own: unrestricted.
While electracy allows for embodied rhetoric to reach a more vast, global audience than literacy allowed, as the article depicting gender equality around the world does, it also creates an embodied rhetoric that works to expose normativities and their harmful consequences in a more public and political nature. This is evident in the pictures documenting the words of President Elect Donald Trump’s words on, near, or next to women’s bodies. This multimodal project shows Trump’s language toward women on as a way to realize the consequence of a very public rhetoric. This politicized, biased project aims to use women’s bodies as a way to expose the effect that Trump’s rhetoric could have on gendered relations among the population that he governs. My effort in including this example is not to make a partisan or politically opinionated claim of my own, but rather, my goal is to use this example to demonstrate the way that the shift to electracy has brought with it a more public, political rhetoric that is often expressed, performed, and/or practiced by and with the body.
Pieces of Herself is another example of the rhetoric of the “written on” body in a digital space. In this work of E-Literature, users can drag and drop colored objects that can be placed on the black and white shape of a female body on the left side of their screen. Once a user does so, they will hear various audio files that “range from music to a biblical pronouncement about the ‘proper’ socio-cultural function of women.” The goal of this interactive piece by Juliet Davis is to “use the motif of the dress-up doll to explore issues of gender identity in the context of home, work, and community.” This piece exposes the ideologies and expectations imposed on the body of the one who identifies as female in various private and public context through the platform of interactive E-Literature. Through the apparatus of electracy, this piece challenges the traditional idea of the novel by incorporating a non-linear, multilayered, and interactive reading experience to establish a new embodied rhetoric that brings the fragmented, marginalized experience that the body of a woman is subject to under current societal expectations.
The Speaking Body in Electracy
*video for speaking body in electracy
While the previous video showed the way that embodied rhetoric uses new media technologies to expose restrictive problematic ideologies about identity and the body, this video shows ways that said technology can be used to subvert and resist such restrictions. The examples used in the video of cyborgs, species reassignment in second life, and the automatic assignment of gender and race in the videogame Rust epitomizes Ulmer’s theorizing of the behavior (play) and ground (body) of electracy. While there are still forms of bodily rhetoric that work to resist the normativites and constrictions imposed on it in the age of literacy, I argue that with the emergence of new media technologies comes new possibilities for “play” by morphing, deconstructing, or changing one’s identity and bodily form in virtual environments.
Cyborgs, as Donna Harraway explains in “The Cyborg Manifesto” illuminate the intermingling of the behavior and ground of electracy by using A.I. technology to manifest a bodily from that deconstructs the boudaires between human/animal/machine and also between male/female that are present in physical spaces and in the apparatuses of literacy. The cyborg does not procreate within the bodily confines of heteronormativity and anatomical dependence that are at work in physical worlds, rather cyborgs sex “restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates” (1). The cyborg provides a model for thinking about gender in terms not valued by reproduction and one’s need for a partner to procreate. Instead, the cyborg’s reproduction is through replication: a process much more independent and liberated than having to conform to heteronormativity or to be wealthy enough to afford modern medical procedures to achieve reproduction. The cyborg does not procreate within the physical confines of heteronormativity and anatomical restrictions, rather the cyborg uses the apparatuses associated with electracy, such as A.I. to assimilate another version of itself. The cyborg body not only resists the confines and notions of reproduction, this body also resists the confines of gender present in the physical world. As Harraway puts it, “the cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world” (292). The cyborg is a gender-absent body because the cyborgs history and understanding of itself is not rooted in sexuality, but rather, in programmed information and emotion. The mind and body of the cyborg works to subvert the notions of species and gendered existence in the physical world by serving as an embodied example of a world without these restrictions. The rhetoric of the cyborg, a resistant rhetoric that works to challenge us to conceptualize a post-gendered world in which creatures can be both humans, animals, and machine, both programmed and intuitive, both simulated and created, both crafted and natural, is a rhetoric performed by and with the body of the cyborg.
The cyborg body morphs into another existence in order to resist notions of gender in current societal constructions. The virtual environment of Second Life allows users to change their bodily form or practice the “play” of electracy by creating avatars that are of other species. A digital project by Micha Cardenas entitled “Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study” explores this notion. This project uses the technology of Second Life to explore the implications of species reassignment surgery in a digital space. Through experiences like this, users of new media technology can resist traditional regulations of the body that are present in physical spaces by playing with new identities in digitized social spaces, without having to occur the permanence and financial cost of these changes in the physical realm. Through this example, we can see that the emergence of electracy brought along with it a class equalizing force in that one does not need to be privileged enough to incur costs of surgery in order to play with their bodily identity. Instead, one can become a new species or gender in virtual atmospheres.
Lastly, this video showed the example of a video game called Rust in which game developer Garry Newman experimented with automatically assigning player’s avatars a race and gender. This experimentation, however, was met with almost exclusively negative feedback from players. One Rust player tweeted, “You’ve made me into a girl. Not happy,” while another player complained that they were “being forced to identify with the company’s ‘feminist ideals’ .” (hyperlink thinkprogress article)The negative feedback from these players shows something interesting about the relationship between body and play enabled enabled by electracy: that it may actually be effective in uncovering and subverting problematic ideologies. I believe it is successful because these users were uncomfortable in having the bodily form that makes them have privilege or that reflects the problematic values of a culture that favors their existence, while it peripheralizes others. These players were so uncomfortable with other forms of existence that they did not even want to step into another body for the length of a video game. A new confinguration of power, one that deconstructing binaries and equalizes all forms of bodily existenes, even those that exist on a spectrum, may become possible if the embodied rhetoric of the speaking and written on body continues to reach audiences through the apparatuses of electracy.
