The Great Chain of Being: Manifesto on the Problem of Agency in Science Communication

Abstract

Definitions of agency vary, but most begin with the idea of the freedom to make choices and take actions that benefit an agent. To that foundation, most rhetorical theories of agency add an acknowledgment of the social and political forces constraining the agent—often using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to attribute these forces to opposing “agents” or to elements of the “scene” (Burke, 1969). Other frameworks invoke Richard Vatz’s or Jenny Edbauer Rice’s models to attribute agency not just to particular actors but to kairos—the rhetorical exigence or drama as a whole (Burke, 1969; Vatz, 1973; Biesecker, 1989; Edbauer, 2005). Carolyn R. Miller, working in this vein, established what has proven to be the field’s benchmark definition of rhetorical agency: “the kinetic energy of performance that is generated through a process of mutual attribution between rhetor and audience” (Miller, 2007, 137). In other words, to enact agency, a rhetor must both intend to act as an agent and be recognized as such by the other agents operating in the rhetorical situation.