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Edbauer Rhetorical Ecologies notes
“Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation toRhetorical Ecologies”
Rhetorical Society QuarterlyFall 2008, Volume 35, #4 pages 5-24(Edbauer )6
discussion of Lloyg Bitzer’s definition of a rhetorical situation
 This seems like an important or foundational definitionCite in the article “a natural context of persons, events, object, relations, andan exigence which strongly invites utterances…”Exigent: urgent, pressing
“Whereas Bitzer suggests that the rhetor
discovers
exigencies thatalready exist, Vatz argues that exigencies are
created 
for audiencesthrough the rhetor’s work” itals there.
Seems like another version of Plato versus Isocrates: exists already versusaction
7 “According to Bieseeker, the problem with many takes on rhetoricalsituation is their tendency to conceptualize rhetoric within a scene of already-formed, already-discrete indidivuals.”
 The subjects are already fixed. How can rhetoric then impact them or theirnature?8 Edbauer quoting
Phelps “how an element (e.g. the writer as “ethos”)
isdiscriminated from a flux 
and perceived as invariant, stable, andautonomous…Natural and traditional categories acquire greater depth andscope when we …temporalize them, interpret them as metaphors, expandtheir range of variation, multiply their interpretants, pursue their logic tothe limit, or treat them in historical institutional terms. “
( emphasis isEdbauer’s)Perhaps this can be considered and compared to the work of Lanham andoscillation; instead of attempting to define fixed points, making the flux and flow of rhetorical skill or ability the point of writing or composition classes.
“Rather than seeing rhetoric as the totality of its discrete elements,Phelps’ critique seeks to recontextualize those elements in a wider sphereof active, historical, and lived processes. That is, the elements of arhetorical situation can be re-read against the historical fluxes in whichthey move.”
Not treating specific things as things but rather as verbs or events. This reminds me of Zen ala Watts.8 Smith and Lybarger emphasize the importance of perceptionWhen discussing Smith and Lybarger, Edbauer states,
“The exigence is notproperly located in any element of the model. Instead, what we dub
exigence
is more like a shorthand way of describing a series of events.
 
Edbauer Rhetorical Ecologies notes
The rhetorical situation is part of what we might call, borrowing fromPhelps, an ongoing social flux.”
9 when discussing Shaviro, Edbauer quotes him, “
Rather, the force of allmessages,
as they accrete over time
, determines the very shape of thenetwork. The meaning of a message cannot be isolated from its mode of propagation, from the way it harasses me, attacks me, or parasiticallyinvades me
. (24—Edbauer’s emphasis). (Edbauer 9)[Connected, or what it means to live in a networked society]10 the social field is not a series of fixed or set sites which are limited situations; thesocial field is events that are shifting and moving and connected with other events(revisit article—nearly a quote)12 reference to Amin and Thrift’s description of a city as an amalgam of processesand that sites “
are sustained by the amalgam of processes, which can bedescribed in ecological terms of varying intensities of encounters andinteractions—much like a weather system
” (quote of Edbauer discussing A & T)19 “Not only do these counter-rhetorics directly respond to and resist the originalexigence, they also expand the lived experience of the original rhetorics by
adding
to them—even while changing and expanding their shape.” The very nature of the rhetoric is to flux, flow, impact, and engage and alterone another.Fluidity and viral spread are terms that are used21Rosa Eberly: rhetoric as a process—getRichard Marback: rhetoric of materiality—get, material theory of rhetoric21-22 Edbauer’s notion of generative research22 documentation creates social effectsDoing that consciously and intentionally22-23 “Bringing this logic into the realm of our own rhetorical pedagogy, we arereminded that rhetorically-grounded education can mean something more thanlearning how to decode elements, analyze texts, and thinking
about 
publiccirculations of rhetoric. It can also engage process and encounters. Not “learningby doing,” but “
thinking
by doing.” Or, better yet,
thinking/doing
—with a razor thinkslash mark barely keeping the two terms from bleeding into each other” (italics areEdbauer’s; Edabauer 22-23).
 
Edbauer Rhetorical Ecologies notes
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