Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Topics for Analysis » Futurism Introduction

Futurism Introduction

Founding of Futurism

Unlike our discussion on postmodernism, which has no clear definitive definition, Futurism with a capital ‘F’ refers to the movement established by the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti. When people use futurism with a lowercase ‘f’, they’re often referring to a loosely associated movement that attempts to predict the future. Both Futurists and futurists LOVE technology and generally see the future as solving problems of the present. We’ll focus on Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, but there were others in his movement. Also, we’ll focus on Italian Futurism, but there were other Futurist movements in the early part of the 20th Century: Russian, English, Slovak.

For dates, Futurism’s heyday was 1909-1916 (WWI pretty much ended the movement).

Major Themes in Futurism

  1. Technology: Above all else, Marinetti looked to technology as a muse for Futurist art. Just as John Gast’s “American Progress” painting shows technology as a force of civilization (and as good), Marinetti saw technology as a way for humans to evolve and harness more power over nature and progress from the past.
  2. War: Along with consumer or everyday technologies (e.g., the automobile) Marinetti thought war and militaristic technologies (e.g., tanks, machine guns, dirigibles) were important to pursue to make Italy great.
    • Although we think of Italian culture (and, therefore, the nation of Italy) emerging from the Roman Empire, modern Italy as we know it wasn’t unified until 1870–that’s after the US Civil War.
    • Not surprisingly, Italy was unified through battle, and these wars were relatively recent for F. T. Marinetti (born in 1876).
    • Fascism–although Marinetti aligned himself with Mussolini, considering him to be “just another fascist” is short sighted. Like fascists, he was pro-military and nationalistic (believing in panitalianismo, Italian unification), but what do we call pro-military nationalistic citizens…patriots.
    • Got a taste for the thrill of battle as a war correspondent when Italy invaded Libya during the pre-WWI push for European nations to colonize Africa and other parts of the world.
  3. Dynamism: Art was to reflect constant motion or movement. Nothing was to stand still–kind of like this sculpture.
    • Loved speed!
  4. Ahistoricity: Forget the past. Marinetti wanted to be (metaphorically) reborn and detached from his own past. He lamented and chastised Italians’ and foreigners’ love of past Italian art.
    • Museums were worthless (ironically, Futurist artworks are in many museums)–art should be for the moment, avant-garde.
    • Buildings shouldn’t use archaic styles of “the dead” past; instead, they should drop ornamentation and use “the straight line” as much as possible (e.g., Sant’Elia’s La Città Nuova [1912-1914])
    • Avant-garde movements are all short lived
    • Ironically, they are credited for shaping modernist art in the 20th century.
  5. Parole in Libertà: Marinetti wanted to free the bounds of everything he could think of–history, weak human bodies, and grammar. Yes, he wanted to promote a syntax without grammatical rules that he saw as inefficient.
    • Wireless Imagination–love Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless
    • Typography as poem and visual art–Zang Tumb Tumb
    • 8 Anime in una bomba

“The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism”

Founding: Marinetti and friends are enamored with the technologies they see around them—they seem to be the muses that inspire the group to take off on their quest. A few of the technologies (circa 1900):

  • “red-hot bellies of locomotives”
  • “hellish fires of great ships”
  • “roar of automobiles”

And not so pleasant but somehow inspiring…

  • “O maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain!”
  • “faces smeared with good factory muck—plastered with metallic waste, with senseless sweat, with celestial soot”

There are also many references to throwing off the “chains” of past intellectual values. Futurism tried to separate itself from any aesthetic ideas of the past:

  • “For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui…” (boredom with the past)
  • “We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.”
  • “Museums: cemeteries!”
  • “Museums: absurd abattoirs of painters and sculptors”
  • “We establish Futurism, because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni* and antiquarians.”
    • *Ciceroni (pl, pronounced chi-chair-o-knee) are learned folks, perhaps quasi-philosophers, who guide tourists through museums, ruins, and other cultural sites. It’s derived from Cicero, the ancient Roman philosopher. It isn’t an insult per se, but, because Marinetti doesn’t like the idea that Italy is known for its past, he looks down on ciceroni for helping the world hold onto Italy’s past. Obviously, Marinetti wants to look to the future.

Marinetti had a timeframe for this movement: roughly 10 years, when the members turned 40 and “other younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts.” There are many influences on Marinetti’s aesthetics, but the era with its industrialization and technological advancement were major influences on his movement.

“Destruction of Syntax–Imagination without strings–Words in Freedom”

Marinetti would like to practice what he preaches, but even he recognizes that he needs to explain his “synthetic lyricism, imagination without strings, and words in freedom” using correct syntax and punctuation. He’s still efficient, so that adheres to Futurism’s aesthetics. Here’s a good summary of why he’s advocating these avant-garde aesthetics:

Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility brought about by the great discoveries of science. Those people who today make use of the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the train, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, the ocean liner, the dirigible, the aeroplane, the cinema, the great newspaper (synthesis of a day in the world’s life) do not realize that these various means of communication, transportation and information have a decisive influence on their psyches.

Basically, because contemporary technologies of his time period appeared to speed up life and offer the world to newspaper readers, he felt humans needed to allow this new techno-mediated phenomenon to influence all communication. If there are wasteful phrases, syntactical structure, or burdensome grammar, we should get rid of it. He wants words to convey the essence of the objects they refer to.

Imagination without Strings (also translated as “Wireless Imagination”)

In Italian it’s “Immaginazione senza fili,” which is literally “Imagination without strings.” During the decade before Marinetti’s first Futurist Manifesto, Guglielmo Marconi was exciting the European public (and the overseas public) with his contributions to “telegrafo senza fili” or “wireless telegraphy.” Marinetti was a HUGE admirer of Marconi and claimed his invention inspired his aesthetics.

Marinetti gives us this summary of how to free objects by having their essence communicate without being bogged down in metaphors or analogies (i.e., personification) of the past:

The imagination without strings, and words-in-freedom, will bring us to the essence of material. As we discover new analogies between distant and apparently contrary things, we will endow them with an ever more intimate value. Instead of humanizing animals, vegetables, and minerals (an outmoded system) we will be able to animalize, vegetize, mineralize, electrify, or liquefy our style, making it live the life of material. For example, to represent the life of a blade of grass, I say, “Tomorrow I’ll be greener.”

War, the World’s Only Hygiene

It’s pretty obvious here that Marinetti is infusing a militaristic approach to his movement. As Italy contemplates getting into WWI, he and the Futurists are advocating Italy get involved. Ultimately, WWI ended the Italian Futurist movement. Marinetti was injured and several major members were killed. Into the 1920s and the rise of High Modernism, Futurism fizzled out and Marinetti was mainly considered a quack. His allegiance to Mussolini also hurt his reputation.

Even though he’s not placed in league with T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, he and his movement captured the time period’s moment of industrialization, militarization, and speed. As are all artists, he was a product of his era and saw things in the culture that ordinary folks didn’t. He gave technology and science an artistic outlet, which is exactly what we say about science fiction—technology and science are themes, characters, muses for writers.

Science Fiction

As I mentioned, he’s not usually considered a science fiction writer, but he’s engrossed in technology and does project a techno-futurist vision where technologies are amplified to fuel the progress he considers inherent in technological advancement. The belief that technologies will progress is part of contemporary American culture’s consciousness–we believe technologies will get better. We just might not have the same techno-fever Marinetti displayed.

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