The first thing you think about when you hear the term “rhetoric” is politics. Heck, that’s still my own brain’s default, so I don’t blame you at all. We chalk up rhetoric as something we should be suspicious of, criticize to extremes because it is, by character, duplicitous, aimed at persuading us to buy something above all else. And that’s not far off from the truth.
But political rhetoric is but one part of true-blue rhetoric. So are those delightful rhetorical devices you are forced to use in research papers. And so is the rhetoric you use in normal conversation, creating or subverting subtext, sometimes even without your conscious knowing of it. Yes, taboo as you might consider rhetoric, you cannot avoid it by turning off your T.V. or taking those oh-so-brief hiatuses from social media. Rhetoric, you see, is the art of human communication, and how that communication perceives or crafts reality. The only way to completely escape it is to completely isolate yourself, a nigh impossible dream in a technological world where all things will be connected, if they aren’t already.
Enter Posthuman Rhetoric, a study within rhetorical discipline, birthed from our technologically-dependent culture. Posthuman Rhetoric contains the meanings and implications of a new über-interconnected world. It supposes how and in what situations our minds become as one entity, and the effects of technology and mass mutually-shared knowledge on the ways we communicate and interpret reality. It is the next step in a movement past humanism, which dictates that reality is made by, around, for, and from humans alone. Posthumanism is past humanism in sequence, but it is still connected to it in form. Still, the humanist must experience loss to achieve that transition into posthumanism, as it is meant to revise the reality that humanism once dominated. The loss can be either negative or positive, but it is a loss nonetheless.
Sounds totally bothersome if you’re a human, right? It is, unless you realize that you unwittingly engage with Posthuman Rhetoric every day through the medium known as “Popular Culture.” Oh, yes — that. That thing most people know through the phrase “pop culture references,” but don’t realize can encapsulate any medium of entertainment that has a standing somewhere in the modern world as part of its communicative reality. Movies, TV, video games, books, music, even famous personalities, are all a part of Popular Culture. Without even realizing it, by the virtue of being hyperconnected, most human beings engaged with Popular Culture have already begun their transitions into posthuman reality — though few ever really realize it.
And yet some of the pieces of Popular Culture directly reflect the losses required or occurring on the part of the humanist through its media. I’m here to assess those losses, calculate them, and see exactly how they reflect the humanist audience’s transition into a Posthuman reality. If you see a post titled *V* with a number (ex. *V3*), that marks the particular post as one of these vignettes.
Also, as a warning, THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MANY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS OF POPULAR CULTURE. I reiterate: you have been warned.
Morning's Early Dark 