Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being

In Ambient Rhetoric, Thomas Rickert seeks to dissolve the boundaries of the rhetorical tradition and its basic dichotomy of subject and object. With the advent of new technologies, new media, and the dispersion of human agency through external information sources, rhetoric can no longer remain tied to the autonomy of human will and cognition as the sole determinants in the discursive act.

Rickert develops the concept of ambience in order to engage all of the elements that comprise the ecolog...