Clinamen

My Dissertation is entitled Hospitable Texts, and it explores the ethic of hospitality that drives Wikipedia and many other Web texts. While many bemoan Wikipedia for its messiness, cacophony, the lack of a single author, I argue that such traits make Wikipedia (and other texts like it) ideal for rhetorical study.

As a collection of hospitable texts, texts that invite participation, interaction, and manipulation, the Web leaves loose ends untied. It allows for high levels of noise and incorporates the dismissive, ridiculous, offensive, irrational, poorly argued, or poorly written. This hospitality makes the tools of rhetoric essential to those who find themselves within the world of hospitable texts. Further, such texts call for a refiguring of some of the key terms in rhetorical theory and computers and writing scholarship: rhetorical agency, community, and intellectual property. These key terms shift radically in a space that draws together so many texts and gives place to reader/writers.

For more details about my scholarly work, see my CV.

For an explanation of the word "Clinamen," see this blog entry.

[Image Credit: Visibilmente.com]