Kairos, Nomos, New Media: Paradox As A Reservoir For Invention

Abstract

In the wake of the so-called "social turn" in writing studies, the scholarship of invention has enjoyed renewed interest. This dissertation is primarily concerned with invigorating the research of invention by turning towards viable but untapped generative approaches for composing that have been forged by artists working in areas external to composition studies by putting into practice what media theorist Gregory Ulmer calls a "heuretic" approach to invention. (I use the term heuretic to indicate the appropriation of an inventional model from a domain or discipline such as art, though other domains such as engineering would suit just as well.) To move towards this practice, the project proceeds through theoretical and practical issues of invention in the domains of rhetoric, history, psychoanalysis, media studies, and composition. The major problem that this dissertation seeks to overcome is the tension between the terms kairos and nomos. The way these terms unfold in the course of this study suggest that invention--the bringing into being of the unknown--is thwarted by our culture(s), histories, and traditions. I come to argue that we perceive a problem because our traditions have given us an understanding of temporality that follows a straight line, a line mirrored in the linear paradigm of print. I show that new media opens up different narrative configurations for writing and composition, configurations that illustrate that rather than being a logical flaw, paradox can serve as a "reservoir," a productive starting place for thinking and writing with new media.