When we first circulated the call for “[blank]-in-the-loop writing,” we were motivated by a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, belongs in the loop? The question emerged from ongoing, often polemic, conversations about generative AI and writing, but it was never intended to be limited to AI itself. Inspired by Alan Knowles’s work on rhetorical load sharing and by the increasingly complex ecologies in which contemporary writing unfolds, we invited contributors to explore the people, technologies, values, infrastructures, practices and possibilities that shape writing processes. Intuitively and empirically, we believed loops were refreshingly variable, idiosyncratic, and somehow also familiar. We hoped…
Author: Mehdi Mohammadi
Mehdi Mohammadi, Derek Mueller
Mehdi Mohammadi is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric & Writing at the University of New Mexico where he also teaches Core Writing as a teaching associate. His research focuses on philosophy of technology, digital media rhetoric, and technological posthumanism.
In this post the 2024-25 DRC Fellows cohort share their reflections of working on collaborations and developing their scholarship alongside the DRC. During this past year, this cohort of Fellows developed a variety of projects ranging from blog carnivals, podcast episodes, theoretical pieces, and more! We loved working with these Fellows and look forward to following their journey beyond the Fellowship! Robert Beck The Digital Rhetoric Collaborative has been a real highlight of my graduate school experience. It was great meeting and working with other graduate students with a wide-range of interests all of which are centered on digital rhetoric. The…
This is a follow-up to a previous Yack post, which explores doing philosophy of technology in Rhetoric & writing Studies (RWS). To read more about the ways in which philosophical frameworks of technology might benefit RWS, you can find the previous post here. Diane Davis (2021) has already informed us of rhetoricity as “the fundamental affectability and responsivity already supposed in every tangible rhetorical exchange, every enculturating inscription, every effort to reach or touch the other(s)” (p. 195). To put it another way, rhetoricity is the existential condition that allows rhetoric to happen in the first place. Davis puts it…
The philosophy of technology is fundamentally concerned with interrogating the epistemic, ontological, and ethical underpinnings of human engagements with technological systems, artifacts, and infrastructures. It compels us to reflect not only on the instrumental logic that drives technological development—e.g., assumptions of efficiency, optimization, and progress—but also on the deeper ontological and epistemological entanglements that shape human-technology relations. Every technological action is predicated upon implicit presuppositions: that a given tool will augment human capability, that a process will streamline productivity, or that an algorithm will yield objective, data-driven insights. Yet, the philosophy of technology insists upon a more rigorous examination of…