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Show 98 subjective network in motion. As such, the ANT would follow the network of relations produced by this paper to determine how this actant created new forms of agency and social change. The White Paper does not intrinsically possess an "embedded ideology" that publics rationally identify with; it is an actant, or subject, that performed its agency by creating relations with objects that became part of its subjective network. Altogether, Charland is correct to assume that the audience is not distinct from the rhetorical forces that create it; however, his implicit suggestion that subjects are ideological risks a reduction that overlooks some of the human and nonhuman relations that have created the network that constitutes objects as subjects. Regardless, audiences are not obsolete spectators of the rhetorical act; they are actively part of the bundles of relations that creatively produce the subjective networks that they themselves are part of. If the concept of audience must assume static spectators, external from rhetorical affairs, then audiences no longer exist. Conclusion: Lessons from a Geographical Approach to Rhetoric This chapter has argued for a posthumanist conception of rhetoric that takes objects, and their rhetorical forces, seriously. Latour's subject-as-object perspective transforms rhetoric in three ways. First, rhetoric is no longer in the service of truth, reason, or meaning. It is a force that does something in the world. As such, rhetoric as force encourages rhetorical critics to encounter rhetoric for what it is: an ontological actor that cannot be reduced to logocentric traditions of philosophy and rhetoric. Second, the text is an assemblage of networked forces that are energetic in their mediations, translations, and negotiations with other actants. Retooling McGee (1990), we can see that our job is to follow an association's fragments to create a map that traces |
