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David Beard and Joshua Gunn
Concluding Remarks: Cutting a New Path in Media Studies and in Rhetorical Studies In this essay we have provided a brief description of Virilio's critical project and underscored a number of useful concepts. Like certain approaches in the rhetoric and sociology of science and in film theory, we suggested that Virilio's project can be understood as addressing the articulation of technologies of representation and modes of human perception. Because Virilio's approach moves beyond the epistemological to the ideological (differentiating it from the rhetoric and sociology of science) and because his approach is not grounded in the complex intellectual terrain of psychoanalytic discourse (as is film theory), we believe that Virilio offers a fresh lens with which to continue thinking about implications of media technology. The introduction promised some clearer path for reflections on media, from the rhetorical tradition. In closing, we would like to briefly describe the ways in which Virilio's work can be seen as continuous with the rhetorical tradition of the twentieth century. We would also like to explain what happens when Virilian thought is brought to bear on recent research that has appeared in “computer-mediated communication.” Virilio as Culmination of One Strand of Thought in the Rhetorical Tradition Science and technology has remained a consistent thread in rhetorical studies in this century. We have already pointed toward those interested in the rhetoric of science (Bazerman and others). But more pointedly, Virilio can in some ways be seen as the completion of the meditations on technology begun by Kenneth Burke. In Permanence and Change, Burke borrowed from social theory to discuss the “technological psychosis.” In Burke’s way of thinking, the advancing technology of the day and the patterns of work available within those fields of technology created in individuals a kind of interpretive screen, filtering an individual’s thoughts and reflections (Permanence and Change 38-42). It is the rise of new technologies, in the age of industrialization, that enables this shift in interpretive patterns to create this technological psychosis. But it should be noted that, in Burke, the technological psychosis was not tied to any specific technology. Burke was far more concerned with a kind of social mindset about technology, than any individual’s experience of technology. This limitation is especially striking, because in later writings, Burke becomes committed to an embodied sense of what it means to be human (most famously encapsulated in the “Definition of Man” (Language as Symbolic Action 3-24). But Burke never connects that embodied sense of humanity to an embodied experience of technology. The interpretive pattern called a “technological psychosis” is a poor analytic tool for rhetoric in an age of media studies. Instead, Burke’s later works point the ways that rhetoricians can go—but Burke never went—in analyzing media: toward the bodily experience of media, as this experience affects interpretation. We believe that,
in many ways, Virilio enables the synthesis that Burke could never
achieve. Virilio ties the
Burkean
interpretive
experience under conditions of technology
to the individual’s experience
of individual technologies. This is a direction enabled by
Virilio’s phenomenological roots.
Though most rhetorical critics of media texts today do not
consider
their work rooted in the phenomenological tradition, we believe that
Burke’s work does represent a kind of heritage, within the
rhetorical
tradition, that makes Virilio a fellow traveler and Virilian criticism
a
natural end to that strand of thought in rhetorical studies. His work also represents a
substantial
improvement over current media scholarship, especially that done under
the
rubric of “computer mediated
communication.”
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