A Bridge to Next Week

There are several places in which Latour makes comments that support or hint at a couple key rhetorical concepts. The first is Lloyd Bitzer’s notion of the rhetorical situation, which is assigned reading for next week. A second, and related concept is that of rhetorical genre.

Latour writes, “When, for one reason or another, you happen to come to the stage, you become quickly aware that most of the ingredients composing the scene have not been brought there by you…” (p. 165-166). Basically, we are constantly prompted by and encouraged to respond to particular complexes of people, things, events etc. These situations are not of our own creation, but we must navigate them nonetheless. Bitzer (1968) went so far as to basically suggest that all human interaction was dependent on the details of the rhetorical situation. Our task in any rhetorical situation is to fashion our discourse in such a way that it fits the constraints of that situation and remedies the exigence or imperfection that moved us to respond in the first place. Of course Bitzer’s explanation is much more complicated than that, but I believe Bitzer and Latour are seeing our position as actors within a collective very similarly.

Genre theory, which is typically based in the rhetorical situation, also suggests that the scene has a major influence on our actions and behavior. Edwin Black (1965) wrote, “First, we must assume that there is a limited number of situations in which a rhetor can find himself…Second, we must assume that there is a limited number of ways a rhetor can and will respond rhetorically to any given situational type…Third, we must assume that the recurrence of a given situational type through history will provide the critic with information on the rhetorical responses available in that situation” (p.133). Basically, genre theory and practice, by helping us understand and predict social interaction, can be understood as a helpful aid to tracing associations.

To understand the “ingredients” in any situation seems to be part of the task for ANT. Latour writes, “Yes, we should follow the suggestion that interactions are overflowed by many ingredients already in place that come from other times, other spaces and other agents; yes, we should accepts the idea of moving away to some other sites in order to find the sources of those many ingredients” (p. 171). ANT obviously has different, and perhaps grander goals in mind, so maybe instead of arguing that genre theory fits some of ANT’s criteria, it would be more useful to argue that genre studies could be improved by using some ANT. But then again, I already have a final paper topic.