Rhetorics


 

 

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Image from: Schiappa, Edward. "Did Plato Coin RhĂȘtorikĂȘ?" American Journal of Philology 111 (1990): 157-70

 

 

 

 

In "Motion Capture," Kodwo Eshun defines science as intensified/estranged rhythm. Eshun's sketch, speculative and suggestive, resonates with the intensification of "shorthand" (tagging, metadata, pseudocode) and underscores science's tendency to "gather," hence, group-composing "rhetorics;' rhetoric as metaprogramming, the cultivation of techniques for simplifying the information required to describe and participate in our world, in all of it's sense and nonsense: "Traditional science still means a depletion, cold scientists, extreme logic and all these corny cliches: the ads still show this. But in musical terms, science is the opposite, science is intensification, more sensation. Science is basically rhythm intensified, rhythm estranged. And that's another kind of science, that's how whole generations understand science. When they talk about abstract, what they mean by abstract is sensations so new it hasn't yet got a language for it. So the shorthand is to just call it abstract. There's a whole generation who've grown used to thinking of sensory emotions without a language for them yet"

 

sampledelia defined