![]() ![]() 2 What I will simply refer to as the ‘docens/ utens problem’ accurately characterizes an underexamined aspect of the field of software studies’ call to examine code as an object of research in and of itself. 1 The former potentially creates a ‘cynical’ audience immune to the concealment and dissimulation of the latter. ![]() In as far as rhetoric is a Gorgianic ‘power available to everyone,’ Miller invokes a distinction from the scholastics to declare that we face an ‘endless regress’ in which rhetorical pedagogy ( rhetorica docens) actually lessens the effectiveness of rhetorical practice ( rhetorica utens). On the other hand, rhetorical pedagogy aims to reveal or name the workings of these hidden tools to guide the creation of rhetorical acts as well as to help educated audiences become aware of the concealed use of rhetoric in practice. On the one hand, a rhetor strives to conceal the deliberate use of rhetorical art (techné) in order to maximize her persuasive influence because audiences distrust a palpable design. Miller identifies a contradictory impulse within the history of rhetoric. In her essay ‘Should We Name the Tools?’ Carolyn R. I offer a close reading of the ontological concealment of code with regard to the videogame FreeCiv, an opensource simulation game modeled on Sid Meiers’ Civilization II. This essay draws on the history of rhetoric’s interest in critical revelation and persuasive concealment (production, enactment) to define an ontological conception of concealment whether neither the agency of human programmers nor the description of code fully accounts for the complex and rich ways that code creates a world ( welt) beyond human design. These frameworks demonstrate that the goal of revealing code beneath the interface screen should also be accompanied by a reconceptualization of the relationship between human and nonhuman agency in order to account for the ways in which code never fully unconceals its Being in representation or use. Yet, past and recent phenomenological conceptions of technology have called into question the vision of an intentional and all-knowing human agent. Researchers in the fields of software studies and digital rhetoric often presuppose that code is something that can be known or revealed through instrumental human agency. ![]()
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