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Brummett addresses the question of how the aesthetic experience of machines can have rhetorical influence. He develops a theory of machine aesthetics, showing nine dimensions of the aesthetic experience of machines and machine-like objects or activities. He identifies three general types of machine aesthetics: Mechtech, classical machine aesthetics based on hardware, gears, pistons, and so forth; Electrotech, high technology machine aesthetics based on the ability of electricity to put machinery on the human scale; and Chaotech, the aesthetic appeal of the decayed machine. In each case, rhetorical applications of the aesthetic are explored. A final critical application shows how the film
Brazil warns its audience that fascism can be supported by simulations based on machine aesthetics.
Brummett's book develops and articulates ideas in the fields of rhetoric and literature that have not been brought together before. In a radical departure, Brummett sees machines not as passive backdrops to human intercourse, but rather as possessing a powerful rhetoric of their own. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of communications, art, and aesthetics.
List of contents
Aesthetics, Machines, and Rhetoric
Mechtech: Classical Machine Aesthetics
Electrotech: High Technology Machine Aesthetics
Chaotech: Aesthetics of the Decayed Machine
Simulations and Machine Aesthetics in Brazil
Works Cited
Index
About the author
BARRY BRUMMETT is Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of several books and articles, including
Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (Praeger, 1991).
