Interview | Victor Vitanza

This episode is the last installment in Zeugma's summer interview series. Recorded at the 2014 Rhetoric Society of America conference, this series has so far featured Drs. Roxanne Mountford, Collin Brooke, Jeff Rice, and Joyce Locke Carter. This time around, we talk with Victor Vitanza of Clemson University and the European Graduate School. Dr. Vitanza founded the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) program at Clemson. He's the author of such books as Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric and Sexual Violence in Western Thought and Writing, and is the editor of Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory. He's currently working on a book and companion film entitled The Returns of Philology: This Time, Anachronistics.

In this interview, Vitanza discusses Kenneth Burke and Geoffrey Sirc, rhetorics and media old and new, and Immanuel Kant and Internet cats. In addition to catology, he draws on scatology and the logos. There's also talk of the future of Pre/Text and Clemson's RCID program. You can stream the episode using the player above; you can also stream and download it in the iTunes store or by following this link.

Works Cited

Words

Kenneth Burke's "Rhetoric--Old and New"

Diane Davis's Inessential Solidarity (p. 120)

Jacques Derrida's "Mochlos; or, the Conflict of the Faculties" (available in Logomachia and in Eyes of the University)

Immanuel Kant's "Conflict of the Faculties"

George Kennedy's "A Hoot in the Dark"

Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (p. 2)

Geoffrey Sirc's "Writing Classroom as A&P Parking Lot" (available in English Composition as a Happening)

Sounds

Johann Sebastian Bach's "Italienisches Konzert, BWV 971, Movement 1" (public domain)

Eric Detweiler's "Who You Gonna Call?"

Chris Saner's "Mor's Back"

Other music and sound effects via Freesound and GarageBand's loops library