ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a reading of how standard and new rhetorical materialisms identify “figures of entanglement” that illuminate increasing aspects of the generativity and dynamism of matter and rhetoric. In so doing, rhetoric for both Plato and Aristotle acts not only to elevate the knowledge of philosophers above the knowledge of rhetoricians but also, male philosopher as the unmarked ideal of human identity itself, thereby acting to “metaphorically condense” all other sensible, material bodies as themselves deficient supplements against that immaterial ideal as well. Independent of these “standard,” interactional materialist approaches, more recent scholarship has emerged that identifies itself with a “new materialist” project. The chapter provides a brief distillation of how we understand key aspects of the quantum physics basis for Barad’s theory of diffraction. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
