Toward a Rhetoric of Network (Media) Culture: Notes on Polarities and Potentiality

Abstract

lhe desire for simplicity has haunted rhetoric and composition for most of its history, from stock forms for producing oral speeches in ancient times to simple processes for the production of written texts in contem porary times. Even though the desire to utilize simplicity to understand the world was the driving force of science, Taylor recognizes that science is at root a metaphysical if not theological enterprise (137). Simplicity is always abstracted from complex realities. This has certainly been the tendency in rhetoric and composition, whose primary debate has been between two opposing methods for simplifying the complexity of writ ing. On the one hand, expressivists responded to writing's complexity by abandoning system altogether. On the other, rhetoricians of various stripes have tried to produce simple systems that make writing teachable. Neither faction has fully addressed the complexity of writing, and I think the value of Taylor's book is that it may lead the field to confront this reality. Though some of his conclusions regarding education in general are debatable, the book does a good job of summarizing much of the work in complexity theory and applying it to various fields?art, architecture, theory, and communication. One of the fields that Taylor does not directly address, however, is rhetoric. Just as rhetoric and composition is cur rently confronted with the complexity of writing, rhetorical studies is in the process of trying to determine just what rhetoric would be in our current cultural situation. The ancient civic space that led to the emer gence of rhetoric has been replaced by contemporary network space. In