Comps Questions

Plan for Exams:

1. Area 1: Rhetoric and Composition
   • 2 questions in 3 hours
2. Area 1.1: Digital Rhetorics
   • 2 questions in 2 hours
3. Area 2: Science Fiction
   • 2 questions in 3 hours
4. Area 3: Transhumanism
   • 2 questions in 3 hours

The Questions

Rhetoric and Composition

1. Epicurus defined prolepsis as one of the three categories of truth, creating in this rhetorical figure the power of divine inspiration or preconception. His understanding of prolepsis was one of in-born knowledge and also of the knowledge of the gods communicated through dreams. From this high, divine position, the figure has undergone a significant decline since the classical era. Contemporary rhetoric texts speak of prolepsis as the act of anticipating counterargument when composing a text and often marginalize its import within composition. Using the space created by the shifting definitions of “prolepsis,” discuss the role of futurity and preconception within persuasion and rhetorical thought.
2. Edward P.J. Corbett, in “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed Fist,” identifies a non-rational, non-linguistic strain of rhetoric in the student protest movement of the 1960s. Corbett is horrified by this abandonment of the traditions of rhetoric as defined from the Renaissance onward and propagated within the academy at his moment. Much later, Wayne Booth’s The Rhetoric of Rhetoric enthusiastically discusses rhetoric as any act of persuasion made by a human, conceptually cutting rhetoric off from Corbett’s asignifying traditions. In both cases, scholars have situated rhetoric outside of “the word”, ( logos) but still define the human actor as the focus of rhetorical persuasion. Considering the work done by post-structural thinkers of rhetoric, discuss the post-human or trans-human aspects of rhetorical persuasion, that situate rhetoric outside of individual speakers and, instead, in the shared spaces of language and communication.

Digital Rhetorics

1. The introduction of the Internet and the rise of Web 2.0 as a means of lubricating online life seems to be irrevocably altering our relationship to textual production and textual consumption. While discussions of hypertext have gone on for a number of years within the academy, the real possibility of hypertextual forms (e.g. Twitter) replacing more traditional models of textual conception exists. Yet the theory and practice of composition instruction seems thus far incapable of integrating these new textual modes into their pedagogies. Using arguments about the nature of technology, the persuasive dimensions of new technologies, and an understanding of real-world, Web 2.0 practice, discuss the implications of Web 2.0 for contemporary composition theory.

Science Fiction

1. Rhetoric is often coded as a linguistic practice that relies on the careful construction and manipulation of words by the educated rhetorician to create a desired social effect in the listener / reader. At this moment in the 21st century, we are beginning to explore the rhetorical functions of machines (for instance, the field of rhetoric of technology), but this exploration continues to feel incomplete. At the same time, writers of science fiction have explored the question of non-linguistic, technological rhetoric through explorations of subjects such as mind control. Nowhere is this more true than in the fiction of Neal Stephenson. Discuss the role of rhetorical technologies in this body of fiction and the possibilities suggested for the study of rhetoric in the present moment.
2. Fredric Jameson, in Archaeologies of The Future, claims that there is no such thing as “dystopian” science fiction. Jameson prefers the term “negative Utopia” for describing societies such as those depicted in 1984. Discuss this question of negative utopia vs. dystopia, as it relates to SF during the 20th century, tuning your response toward examples that might support counter arguments to Jameson about the role of future possibility in the Utopian imagination projected by the science fiction narrative.

Transhumanism

1. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin’s landmark work, The Phenomenon of Man, deals with the emergence of a planetary consciousness and the arrival, in the future, of an Omega Point at which time all humans will come together in a global community of love and understanding. At the same time, Teilhard’s narrative of human development toward this ecstatic emergence is laced with the language of scientific racism and eugenics. Additionally, there is the claim that fascism in Germany was the closest we have come to Teilhard’s ideal before the vision of the Nazi’s was corrupted by racism. There is a clear struggle in this work between the hierarchization of humans based on race and the desire to level the field through the forces of a universal spirit. Discuss the ramifications of this oscillation in the work and connect it to some of the larger issues you see in transhuman thought and Utopian studies in general.

1. Discuss the differences between the posthuman and transhumanism and why the latter is starting to emerge as the new future of the human.