Technē’s Paradox—a frequent theme in science fiction—is the commonplace belief that technology has both the potential to annihilate humanity and to preserve it. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism looks at how this paradox applies to some of the most dangerous of technologies: population bombs, dynamite bombs, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and improvised explosive devices.Hill’s study analyzes the rhetoric used to promote such weapons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining Thomas R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, the courtroom address of accused Haymarket bomber August Spies, the army textbook Chemical Warfare by Major General Amos A. Fries and Clarence J. West, the life and letters of Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard, and the writings of Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Hill shows how contemporary societies are equipped with abundant rhetorical means to describe and debate the extreme capacities of weapons to both destroy and protect. The book takes a middle-way approach between language and materialism that combines traditional rhetorical criticism of texts with analyses of the persuasive force of weapons themselves, as objects, irrespective of human intervention. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism is the first study of its kind, revealing how the combination of weapons and rhetoric facilitated the magnitude of killing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and illuminating how humanity understands and acts upon its propensity for violence. This book will be invaluable for scholars of rhetoric, scholars of science and technology, and the study of warfare.
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Examines commonplace conflicting beliefs that technology will either annihilate humanity or preserve humanity from annihilation. Argues that the paradoxical capacities of weapons influence how humanity understands violent conflict.
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ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Technē’s Paradox and Weapons Rhetoric1. Thomas Malthus’s Population Bomb as a Pre-Text for Technē’s Paradox2. Preaching Dynamite: August Spies at the Haymarket Trial3. Humane, All Too Humane: The Chemical-Weapons Advocacyof Major General Amos A. Fries4. Toward a Peaceful Bomb: Leo Szilard’s Paradoxical Life5. Industrial Antipathy: Irreparability and Ted Kaczynski’s IEDsConclusion: In the Presence of Weapons and RhetoricNotesBibliographyIndex
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“This is an impressive first book: well researched, carefully argued, and engagingly written. Hill posits ‘technological rhetoric’ as an original, interdisciplinary perspective on Technē’s Paradox. Grounded in thorough readings of rhetorical critique as well as science and technology studies, his longitudinal study of ‘machine rhetoric’ warrants attention both for the cases examined—from Malthus to the Unabomber—and for the individual and collective insights the analysis yields.”—David Henry,Sanford Berman Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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The RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric is published by the Pennsylvania State University Press in collaboration with The Rhetoric Society of America. Books published in this series consider rhetoric as both a practice and as a theoretical lens through which to engage other fields, and they investigate how rhetoric itself is complicated as a result of this transdisciplinary exchange. They appeal, first, to scholars in communication studies and English or writing, and, second, to at least one other discipline or subject area. These include, but are not limited to, the rhetoric of science; posthumanist rhetorics; animal studies; the relation of rhetoric and law; digital and visual rhetorics; the intersections of rhetoric and the medical sciences; the networks of rhetoric and economics. Books are well written and accessible to a broad range of students and scholars, as well as innovative and rigorously argued, combining theoretical sophistication with smart case analysis.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780271081236
Publisert
2018-08-28
Utgiver
Vendor
Pennsylvania State University Press
Vekt
476 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
229 mm
Aldersnivå
P, UP, 06, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
240

Forfatter

Biographical note

Ian E. J. Hill is Assistant Professor in the History and Theory of Rhetoric at the University of British Columbia and an affiliate faculty member of the Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies.