| OCR Text |
Show 38 irrational actors. A geographical approach to rhetoric is useful for studying networks of corporate subjectivity because it overcomes the limits of humanism and equips researchers with tools for unpacking the complexity of corporate rhetoric. Much like the human poststructural subject, the corporate subject is dispersed, networked, and displaced. But there are key differences. Corporations have no bodies and no souls, but nonetheless are rhetorically forceful actors. To detail this immanent object, this dissertation will trace this corporate subject within assemblages that have given it life. I11 have identified four: the 11 This researcher realizes this word is problematic; however, for the sake of brevity and style - particularly that which is sanctioned by the University of Utah Graduate School, which states, "the style should be formal rather than colloquial," that "the tone of the thesis or dissertation should be serious," and that "jargon must be avoided because it obscures rather than clarifies the topic" (p. 59). - "I" will be used intermittently as an articulation of my multiple subjectivity. Although "I" is indebted to the Cartesian subject, which is a direct affront to a networked orientation that assumes subjectivity is an assemblage, this dissertation mildly plays with this author's multiple subjectivity by referring to my assemblage as a "[multiple] cartographer," "a [multiple] author," a "[multiple] I," and using personal and possessive pronouns such as "we," "us," "our." This "play" is a direct transgression of the University of Utah's Graduate School "Handbook for Theses and Dissertations," which reduces thesis and dissertation authors to singular, rational, arborescent Beings that must "seriously" and "formally" produce knowledge without "jargon" as rational Cartesian subjects with communicative intentionality (see footnote 19). I justify this decision because this handbook violently reduces the form of theses and dissertations to what Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) call a "major literature," which "implies a constant, of expression or content, serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate it" (p. 105) through "order-words" (p. 106) that destroy creativity and playful becomings through a "minor literature." In Deleuze and Guattari's words, "order-words bring immediate death to those who receive the order, or potential death if they do not obey, or a death they must themselves inflict, take elsewhere" (p. 107). In other words, the Graduate School assumes the role of a dictatorship that excludes the possibility of form acting as an argumentative and rhetorical force by commanding researchers to assume a scientific subjective standpoint that writes in the proper synchronic style, in the key of a "major literature." How can academics performatively "play" with subjectivity if they must obey Kantian imperatives about what good academic writing ought look like? This is a symptom of the force of Cartesianism across disciplines, which puts the postcontinental writer in a double bind. |
