Mitch Reyes | Lewis & Clark College (original) (raw)
Papers by Mitch Reyes
Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences
Women's Studies in Communication
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2010
Women's Studies in Communication , 2020
The title and author names are listed on this sheet as they will be published, both on your paper... more The title and author names are listed on this sheet as they will be published, both on your paper and on the Table of Contents. Please review and ensure the information is correct and advise us if any changes need to be made. In addition, please review your paper as a whole for typographical and essential corrections. Your PDF proof has been enabled so that you can comment on the proof directly using Adobe Acrobat.
Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2018
Commemorating both the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the subsequent Gay Liberation Movement, the Ga... more Commemorating both the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the subsequent Gay Liberation Movement, the Gay Liberation Monument projects a quiet, muted homosexuality that stands in sharp contrast to the courageous and violent assertion of homosexual identity that was Stonewall. Our essay examines this strange incongruity, revealing in the process the homosentimental style-a unique rhetorical form that attempts to negotiate the many contradictory motives animating LGBT advocacy. The Gay Liberation Monument's use of homosentimentality refracts in many directions, simultaneously challenging dehumanizing rhetorics with affective appeals to care and friendship, presenting itself as assimilationist even as it offers coded indices of clone culture, and producing a doubled homosexual body-at once assimilationist and queer. Both the monument and the homosentimental style thus pose a challenge to binary conceptualizations of LGBT rights advocacy that separate assimilationist and queer politics.
Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2019
Algorithms have never been more influential, yet our collective understanding of how they transfo... more Algorithms have never been more influential, yet our collective understanding of how they transform massive networks of cultural power has not kept pace. This is especially true when it comes to economic algorithms, which operate as black-boxes largely inaccessible to the majority of citizens whose worlds they continuously reshape. This essay offers a rhetorical approach to reading algorithms-not only to challenge the positivism and mathematical realism that naïvely apotheosizes algorithms and algorithmic culture, but more importantly to become critical informants, scholars who can open up these black-boxes for fellow citizens, examine the hidden assumptions therein, and study how they actively transform our social-material worlds. The essay's exemplar is the 2008 financial crisis and a little-known algorithm called the Li Guassian Copula, which played a major role in the spread of subprime mortgages. I argue that this Copula puts on spectacular display the power of algorithms as principles of composition-actants that materially expand our social collectives even as they marginalize human agency and practical judgment with forms of technological rationality that, in the case of the Li copula, concentrated the networks of structured finance around a single decision apparatus, rendering those networks both larger and, contra conventional wisdom, more fragile.
Springer, 2020
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a rhetorical approach to mathematics, which has slowl... more The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a rhetorical approach to mathematics, which has slowly emerged over the last fifty years. The essay first explains some of the exigencies that have led rhetorical scholars to be increasingly interested in mathematics and mathematical discourse, followed by a discussion of how such an approach might benefits various mathematical communities. The essay ends with a summary discussion of how a rhetorical approach differs from other interdisciplinary approaches to mathematics.
The group calling themselves The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first organized in April 2004 in o... more The group calling themselves The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first organized in April 2004 in order to plot a strategy to undermine John Kerry's bid for president. They developed several advertisements that questioned everything from the legitimacy of Kerry's medals to the accuracy of his version of the past; they portrayed Kerry as an overly ambitious person willing to distort the truth to achieve his political goals, and they generated a firestorm of political debate. This essay argues that the Swift Boat veterans used realist discourse in collusion with Vietnam remembrance to create rhetorically powerful indictments of Kerry. To develop the argument, I focus on the Swift Boat veterans' first broadcast advertisement , an ad that had a significant influence on the presidential campaign both ideologically and in the polls. I argue that a discourse of realism dominated the ad, concealing not only its questionable credibility and political motives, but also the rhetorical tactics it used to reinforce its realist frame.
Rhet-o-ric: language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but ofte... more Rhet-o-ric: language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.
This essay investigates the rhetoric surrounding the appearance of the concept of the infinitesim... more This essay investigates the rhetoric surrounding the appearance of the concept of the
infinitesimal in the seventeenth-century Calculus of Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz. Although historians often have positioned rhetoric as a supplemental
discipline, this essay shows that rhetoric is the “material” out of which a new and
powerful mathematical system emerges. At the height of empiricism, the infinitesimal,
thought by Newton and Leibniz to be evanescent or nascent, made available no recourse to empirical or geometric verification. Instead, the infinitesimal found its “substance” in the rhetorical arguments surrounding it, which ultimately precipitated an epistemic shift in scientific and mathematical practice.
Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences
Women's Studies in Communication
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2010
Women's Studies in Communication , 2020
The title and author names are listed on this sheet as they will be published, both on your paper... more The title and author names are listed on this sheet as they will be published, both on your paper and on the Table of Contents. Please review and ensure the information is correct and advise us if any changes need to be made. In addition, please review your paper as a whole for typographical and essential corrections. Your PDF proof has been enabled so that you can comment on the proof directly using Adobe Acrobat.
Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2018
Commemorating both the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the subsequent Gay Liberation Movement, the Ga... more Commemorating both the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the subsequent Gay Liberation Movement, the Gay Liberation Monument projects a quiet, muted homosexuality that stands in sharp contrast to the courageous and violent assertion of homosexual identity that was Stonewall. Our essay examines this strange incongruity, revealing in the process the homosentimental style-a unique rhetorical form that attempts to negotiate the many contradictory motives animating LGBT advocacy. The Gay Liberation Monument's use of homosentimentality refracts in many directions, simultaneously challenging dehumanizing rhetorics with affective appeals to care and friendship, presenting itself as assimilationist even as it offers coded indices of clone culture, and producing a doubled homosexual body-at once assimilationist and queer. Both the monument and the homosentimental style thus pose a challenge to binary conceptualizations of LGBT rights advocacy that separate assimilationist and queer politics.
Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2019
Algorithms have never been more influential, yet our collective understanding of how they transfo... more Algorithms have never been more influential, yet our collective understanding of how they transform massive networks of cultural power has not kept pace. This is especially true when it comes to economic algorithms, which operate as black-boxes largely inaccessible to the majority of citizens whose worlds they continuously reshape. This essay offers a rhetorical approach to reading algorithms-not only to challenge the positivism and mathematical realism that naïvely apotheosizes algorithms and algorithmic culture, but more importantly to become critical informants, scholars who can open up these black-boxes for fellow citizens, examine the hidden assumptions therein, and study how they actively transform our social-material worlds. The essay's exemplar is the 2008 financial crisis and a little-known algorithm called the Li Guassian Copula, which played a major role in the spread of subprime mortgages. I argue that this Copula puts on spectacular display the power of algorithms as principles of composition-actants that materially expand our social collectives even as they marginalize human agency and practical judgment with forms of technological rationality that, in the case of the Li copula, concentrated the networks of structured finance around a single decision apparatus, rendering those networks both larger and, contra conventional wisdom, more fragile.
Springer, 2020
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a rhetorical approach to mathematics, which has slowl... more The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a rhetorical approach to mathematics, which has slowly emerged over the last fifty years. The essay first explains some of the exigencies that have led rhetorical scholars to be increasingly interested in mathematics and mathematical discourse, followed by a discussion of how such an approach might benefits various mathematical communities. The essay ends with a summary discussion of how a rhetorical approach differs from other interdisciplinary approaches to mathematics.
The group calling themselves The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first organized in April 2004 in o... more The group calling themselves The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first organized in April 2004 in order to plot a strategy to undermine John Kerry's bid for president. They developed several advertisements that questioned everything from the legitimacy of Kerry's medals to the accuracy of his version of the past; they portrayed Kerry as an overly ambitious person willing to distort the truth to achieve his political goals, and they generated a firestorm of political debate. This essay argues that the Swift Boat veterans used realist discourse in collusion with Vietnam remembrance to create rhetorically powerful indictments of Kerry. To develop the argument, I focus on the Swift Boat veterans' first broadcast advertisement , an ad that had a significant influence on the presidential campaign both ideologically and in the polls. I argue that a discourse of realism dominated the ad, concealing not only its questionable credibility and political motives, but also the rhetorical tactics it used to reinforce its realist frame.
Rhet-o-ric: language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but ofte... more Rhet-o-ric: language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.
This essay investigates the rhetoric surrounding the appearance of the concept of the infinitesim... more This essay investigates the rhetoric surrounding the appearance of the concept of the
infinitesimal in the seventeenth-century Calculus of Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz. Although historians often have positioned rhetoric as a supplemental
discipline, this essay shows that rhetoric is the “material” out of which a new and
powerful mathematical system emerges. At the height of empiricism, the infinitesimal,
thought by Newton and Leibniz to be evanescent or nascent, made available no recourse to empirical or geometric verification. Instead, the infinitesimal found its “substance” in the rhetorical arguments surrounding it, which ultimately precipitated an epistemic shift in scientific and mathematical practice.