So I thought literal, literally. Edbauer discussed rhetorical ecology in "Unframing Models of Public Distinction: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies." As I read I couldn't stop thinking about the wonderful parallel she makes between living organisms and rhetoric in that "rhetorical situations operate within a network or lived practical consciousness or structures of feeling" (5). Rhetoric creates meaning just like one change in an entire ecology can interact every organism in it. Which is why I think Edbauer's point is so effective; she makes a connection with something we already understand. My interest was piqued when Edbauer discussed Amin and Thrift's suggestion that "sites...are sustained by the amalgam of processes, which can be described in ecological terms of varying intensities of encounters and interactions--much like a weather system" (12). I understood this in a general sense but wanted to look further at how weather may indeed help me understand this.
I was reminded of a Fresh Air piece I heard on NPR this summer about how extreme weather conditions are tied to climate change. Thus I thought of the way everything on Earth interacts and can be effected by one change, adding more carbon to the air. In finding the piece I remembered listening to, I realized it lasts over a half hour, so I also looked for a shorter one to help summarize what this ones talks about. If, however, you have the time (I understand if you don't!) it's an interesting piece to listen to.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138601271/weather-warnings-for-a-climate-changed-planet
Here's the 5 minute NPR segment that sums up and addresses some of the issues addressed in the longer piece. Both sites allow you to read or listen to each piece.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/23/138635455/will-global-warming-cause-more-extreme-weather
Edbauer's article proposes "a revised strategy for theorizing public rhetorics (and rhetoric's publicness) as a circulating ecology of effects, enactments, and events by shifting the lines of focus from rhetorical situation to rhetorical ecologies." This made me think of how these segments show how carbon emissions don't just bring about an increase in temperatures. They can also affect moisture levels in the air and can bring about more extreme weather events--tornadoes, floods etc.. In fact, increased flooding isn't just from heavier rain, it's from a "snow pack melting earlier and melting quickly" (1st link). Ms. Cullen also explains how tornadoes like moisture. An increase in temperature means the air can hold more moisture. More moisture can lead to more tornadoes. Thus it's not just a container or fixed site but rather "a networked space of flows and connections" (Edbauer 9). Carbon emissions from China don't just affect China. Each country is not in its own container. Rhetoric is the same way. It doesn't function from isolated situation to situation.
As Edbauer discussed spaces, places, and how they network I started to get confused. I found myself trying to draw out a diagram of how they interacted. However, once I compared spaces and places to these NPR pieces I had a better time making sense of them. The relationship between increased moisture in the air, more extreme weather events, and change in temperatures are like Edbauer's use of Shaviro's place. It "should be characterized less in terms of this sense of community (discrete elements taken together), and more in the interaction between elements--their encounters in the crease and folds" (10). The changes mentioned in these NPR segments cannot be taken as discrete elements and must be considered more as places. They have to be studied together to determine their interaction and how they're linked. Before this piece, I hadn't made the connection about how increased flooding and more tornadoes were actually related. Thus "place becomes a space of contacts, which are always changing and never discrete" (10). Probably by referring to a tornado or flood as an event has something to do with this, it makes it like a container. This is just like how Edbauer explains that a city is considered a noun but it's more appropriate to consider it a verb. These extreme weather events need to become like places where an interaction occurs between elements. These weather events are "shifting and moving, grafted onto and connected with other events" (10).
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