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
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 13th: Introduction to User Design
    • February 15th: Instructions for Users
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 20th: The Rhetoric of Technology
    • February 22nd: Social Constructions of Technology
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • 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
    • March 13th: Introduction to Information Design
    • March 15th: More on Information Design
    • March 20th: Reporting Technical Information
    • March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis
  • 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
    • February 14th: Fascism and Other Valentine’s Day Atrocities
    • February 21st: Fascism Part 2
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • 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
    • March 7th: Fascism Part 3
  • 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
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • 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
New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021) » April 6th: Capitalist Realism

April 6th: Capitalist Realism

Critical Analysis of Media Essay Due Next Week (4/13)

Plan for the Day

  • Critical Analysis of Media Essay
    • Essay Due Next Week
    • You’re not trying to analyze the entirety of a show or film. Aim for a segment.
  • Mark Fisher’s Background
  • Multimodal Project/Presentation
    • Just want it in the back of our minds
    • What will help you the most?

What’s a comma’s favorite type of music?
–Punc Rock


Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2009)

Before we get too far ahead and wonder why there’s all these socialist authors we’re reading, remember, I first read this on the way home from Las Vegas–one of the most grandiose centers of American consumerism. There are tons of zombies there. These authors weren’t selected for us to start a global revolution; instead, we read them because they have quite insightful observations to make about a system that we assume to be a given, one that’s beyond critique.

Critical thinking is uncomfortable.

Below is a quotation that should always be on our minds when discussing Fisher’s book:

“Capialist realism: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (Fisher, 2009, p. 2).

Below are some definitions from or for the text:

  • neoliberalism: the idea of a total (or nearly total) market-driven economy with little or no government regulations.
    • In America, we often label people who promote this philosophy conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, or Republicans. In American popular media, the term “neoliberal” would be confusing because a “liberal” is considered (these are generalizations, of course) having the opposite view of the term “neoliberal.” This term is more a European one and rarely heard outside of academic discussions in America. As a fun side note, check out the history of the usage of liberalism.
  • socialist realism: an artistic style that glorifies the socialist cause, especially that of Joseph Stalin’s authoritarian regime (Scroll to “Cultural and Foreign Policy”).
  • confabulation: in psychology it means to replace fact with fantasy unconsciously in memory.
  • lacuna: empty space or missing part (often in the mind or memory).

Below are some notes from the text:

  • p. 22: “Control only works if you are complicit with it.”
    Consider Anthony Giddens theory of structuration: humans operate under a pre-existing social structure, which controls actions. Citizens abide by and reproduce the overall structure, but this means they consent to the agents of social control that govern them.
  • p. 24: Being bored means NOT being instantly, immediately gratified.
  • p. 25: Teenage slogan recognition. Think of the logos (not speaking Greek here…that’s logos) that kids these days recognize.
    • Kids say the darndest things!
  • p. 26: “education…is the engine room of the reproduction of social reality.”
    • Explain…How does education reproduce social reality? Maybe we need to return to a previous discussion on Base + Superstructure.
  • p. 28: “neoliberal politics are not about the new, but a return of class power and privilege.”
  • p. 33: Families produce labor power.
    {Modern Family…same as it ever was: Disneyland, Javier’s Fiancée, and Phil’s backing out of getting snipped (skip to 16:20 then 21:45). All support the view that families should raise children, thus, reinforcing the idea that the family (superstructure) supports capitalism. MORE BELOW}
  • p. 36: “In the entrepreneurial fantasy society, the delusion is fostered that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates” (James, qtd. in Fisher, p.36).
  • p. 49: Bureaucrats don’t make decisions “they are permitted only to refer to decisions that have always-already been made.” {What does that tell us about a “democratic society”?}
  • p. 54: “The ‘reality’ here is akin to the multiplicity of options available on a digital document, where no decision is final, revisions are always possible, and any previous moment can be recalled at any time.”
    • Consider President Trump’s revision about government shutdowns…
    • In case you needed more…
  • pp. 55-56: consensual confabulations–“the world we experience is a solipsistic delusion projected from the interior of our mind…[, and] it conforms with our infantile fantasies of omnipotence.” {compare with narcissism}
  • p. 58: What can Jason Bourne tell us about culture?
    • ahistoricity
    • continuous present of film editing
    • p. 59: reflects “a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate.”
  • p. 60: Capitalist realism fills our minds (our dreams) by removing “the gaps and lacunae in our memories.”
    • Somewhere I have heard this before
      In a dream my memory has stored
      As defense I’m neutered and spayed
      What the hell am I trying to say?
      –Nirvana “On a Plain”
    • Have I ever told you about my first New Year’s Eve memories?
  • p. 61: “solutions in products, not political processes.” {Images of Consumption–what can a picture show…”}
  • p. 61: Mistaking choice and freedom.
  • p. 63: Media doesn’t look at the root, systemic causes.

“Capialist realism…entails subordinating oneself to a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment” (Fisher, 2009, p. 54).
{Your Weekly Discussion Post is to think about the ideal worker and the attributes they have in the service economy vs. the manufacturing (industrial) economy? Of course, just reflecting on work, workplaces, or work-life-balance is fine to reflect upon.}

Modern Family:  that can have multiple readings (interpretations). On the surface, ABC’s Modern Family is a funny story and a leading character triumphs. Below the surface, it’s a trite display of gender roles and gendered value in patriarchal culture. Check out Gloria meeting Javier’s fiancée. (Here’s a short article about the first part of the episode–Season 4, ep. 20). Here’s the link to Jay getting Gloria new shoes. Phil worried about his manhood when discussing his potential vasectomy with Jay. Here’s an article/review on the entire episode–Modern Family: “Schooled”/”Snip.”

What Is Hauntology?

I’m interested in your impressions of this article. It’s different from most of the reading this semester.

  • p. 16: “What defined this “hauntological” confluence more than anything else was its confrontation with a cultural impasse: the failure of the future.”
  • “…the futuristic now connoted a settled set of concepts, affects, and associations.”
    • What do we associate with the future?
  • “What haunts the digital cul-de-sacs of the twenty-first century is not so much the past as all the lost futures that the twentieth century taught us to anticipate.”
  • “the disappearance of the future meant the deterioration of a whole mode of social imagination: the capacity to conceive of a world radically different from the one in which we currently live.”
    • This is the big takeaway from this article. If I were more up on electronica, I might suggest another take, but I’ll settle for this one…in this time.
    • And what is the “world” we can’t envision, or what can we not envision in this world and, therefore, the future?
    • There’s also a critique of socialism/Marxism/communism we could make. Do those systems ever have to defend themselves?
  • “The future is always experienced as a haunting: as a virtuality that already impinges on the present, conditioning expectations and motivating cultural production.”
  • p. 17: “Everything in [Body Heat]…conspires to blur its official contemporaneity and make it possible for the viewer to receive the narrative as though it were set in some eternal thirties, beyond real historical time.” (quoting Jamison)
    • The bar scene
    • Double Indemnity‘s (1944) speeding discussion
  • p. 18: “Relentless technological upgrades—the same thing, seen and/or heard on a new platform—disguise the disappearance of formal innovation and new kind of sensory experience.”
  • “…series of sweet traces that are veiled by one of sonic hauntology’s signature traits, the conspicuous use of crackle, which renders time as an audible materiality.”
    • As for pastiche, one would add “snap” and “pop” to the above.
  • “…a public service broadcasting system and a popular culture that could be challenging and experimental.”
  • “The radical dimension of social democratic culture, in fact, consisted in the way it produced a longing for its (self-)overcoming, that it was premised on the movement toward a scarcely imaginable future.”
  • “One of the futures that haunts those who count themselves as progressive, then, is the possibility of a culture that could continue what had begun in postwar social democracy, but that could leave behind the sexism, racism, and homophobia which were so much a feature of the actual postwar period.”
    • Of course, all those are behind us now…
  • p. 19: “The disappearance of space goes alongside the disappearance of time: there are non-times as well as non-places. Haunting can be seen as intrinsically resistant to the contraction and homogenization of time and space. It happens when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time.”
  • The Shining…”of the preoccupations that have reemerged in the twenty-first-century take on hauntology. The film refers to hauntology in the most general sense—the quality of (dis)possession that is proper to human existence as such, the way in which the past has a way of using us to repeat itself.”
    • Take fashion, a very zombie behavior, there’s not too much difference between “bell bottoms” and “flared” jeans…hippies are so commercial.
  • p. 20: “to the non-places of coming corporate hyperdomination…”
    • Let’s follow this idea of placelessness:
    • Concord Mills, clusters of chains at highway exits, common food courts, areas around tourist sites, etc.
    • Las Vegas: Unconventional History (2005)

“All the Lost Futures…” (p. 16)

Oh, the lost futures where you’ll (not) go! It takes a certain amount of pessimism to embrace this topic, so I forewarn you that your (constructed) reality may not remain intact. Both of Fisher’s texts point to our reproductions in this capitalist wasteland. You video game fans will recognize the Fallout series as a narrative on the “failure of the future,” but you should also realize that it references contemporary American culture using improved yet the same technologies that moved from tactical purposes (WW2) to practical ones (post-war consumerism): interstates, space technologies, the (early) internet, Las Vegas, Disneyland, shopping malls, etc.

Let’s consider a British writer to go along with Fisher. D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920) is hardly the romance the title suggests (his Lady Chatterley’s Lover is more “romantic”) and offers a scathing rebuke of letting technology take over. Consider the character Gerald Crich:

  • Gerald runs the company ‘‘on the most accurate and delicate scientific method’’; thus, ‘‘the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments’’ (Lawrence 1920/1995, p. 230). Of course, this Taylorist/Fordist impulse for ultra-efficiency was part of the rise of the industrial West. Lawrence appeared to be aware of America’s dominance (or coming dominance in industrialization) because he wrote that the ‘‘[n]ew machinery was brought from America, such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, and unusual appliances’’ (1920/1995, p. 230, emphasis added). Even the machines had nicknames to reinforce their ‘‘human’’ qualities. (Toscano, p. 127)
  • Gerald is the god in his own mind because he adheres so vehemently to the cult of efficiency that permeates industrialization. By putting humans into this framework, their worth directly relates to the work they produce: ‘‘The sufferings and feelings of individuals did not matter in the least….What mattered was the pure instrumentality of the individual’’ (Lawrence 1920/1995, p. 223). (Toscano, p. 128)
  • Unfortunately, this system sets humans up for failure because the loop continually pushes them to work faster and faster, which is ‘‘terrible and heartbreaking in its mechanicalness’’ (Lawrence 1920/1995, p. 230). Therefore, Gerald is not inherently corrupt and destined to breakdown as a machine would, but he is a victim of his own dogma, an ideology the industrialized world embraces along with the cult of efficiency. (Toscano, p. 128)

Spoiler alert! Gerald finds himself at a cul-de-sac of sorts–a valley with impenetrable mountains–where its nature that consumes him (well, that’s an interpretation). Symbolically, he’s leaving humanity and love behind because…you’ll have to read to find out. We’ve previously discussed the meaning of cul-de-sacs, so what do you think. Consider the cultural analysis (suburbia?) and critical analysis (dead end or repetition?).

On a lighter note, perhaps, this Archie Comic from 1997 has made the rounds on social media.

Time Permitting–Zombies

This a tradition in this class–talk about zombies!

More on Structuration Theory

Consider this a theory about power and control. What are the things that control us? We aren’t just controlled be force–police, parents, politicians, etc.–we’re also controlled by ideology, but it’s often invisible, and we don’t reflect upon it. Mark Fisher claims that “Control only works if you are complicit with it” (22). I like to consider Anthony Giddens theory of structuration when I think of Fisher’s argument. Structuration theory proposes that humans operate under a pre-existing social structure, which controls actions. Citizens abide by and reproduce the overall structure, but this means they consent to the agents of social control that govern them. Consider the following quotations from Giddens:

  • “social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution” (New Rules for Sociological Method 121).
  • “To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction. Social systems, which are systems of social interaction, are not structures, although they necessarily have structures. There is no structure, in human social life, apart from the continuity of processes of structuration.” (Studies in Social and Political Theory 118)

Reflecting and advocating Giddens’s theory, James W. Messerschmidt summarizes that “structure both constrains and enables social action” (p. 77). I’ve mentioned that media reproduce ideology, normalizing it. Well, it was already normalized, but it’s impossible to determine whether or not the media (broadly) developed the ideology first or reflected the ideology (or could it be dialectic). We don’t need to worry about a starting point, however, because we can identify instances where culture mediates rules, norms, repetitive behaviors, etc. We can claim that our actions are not solely individually motivated. We reproduce and justify the social system by operating within it.

Giddens’s theory hasn’t been debunked and, although there are criticisms of his initial theory, there are many expansions of his theory. Structuration theory is a useful interpretive lens for cultural studies because it allows us to focus on agents and rules. Simply put, our actions create our world; our interactions maintain or recreate the world. Why do we agents follow rules? Why are there rules? In view of our texts, do humans have any agency, or do they just respond to rules (their code—coding, program language)?

Next Week

We return to Barker & Jane for some light reading–Chapters 11 & 12. You’re Critical Analysis of Media Essay is due also via Canvas (of course).


Works Cited

Archie Publications. Betty #46 (Feb. 1997).

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2009.

Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Polity Press, 1984.

Giddens, Anthony. New Rules for Sociological Method. Basic Books, 1976.

Giddens, Anthony. Studies in Social and Political Theory. Routledge, 2015.

Lawrence, D.H. Women in Love. London: Penguin, 1995. (Original work published in 1920)

Messerschmidt, James W. Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory. Rowman & Littlefield P, 1993.

Toscano, Aaron. Marconi’s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology. Springer, 2011.

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