Poroi

Valentino, Russell Scott

Russell Scott Valentino 143 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
Word Tour 
From the Challenge of 
Virtue to the Challenges of 
Virtual 
Russell Scott Valentino 
Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
     
 
1 
 
At the etymological root of virtue is the Latin word for man, vir.  
Many have noted this connection, but few have known what to 
make of it.  A common, and somewhat predictable, strategy has 
been to leap backward and attempt to resurrect an image of 
heroism – Homeric, Roman, Stoic – as a remedy for the moral 
flabbiness of modern times.  But such anachronistic equations of 
virtue with manhood or courage fail to take into account any of the 
range of associations the word has acquired since Homer.  These 
include doing good, having sex with one person only (or no one at 
all), and establishing a republic – apparently disparate uses which 
are in fact all related.  By considering their common heritage, I 
would argue, alongside the play of root concepts that these various 
uses suggest, one arrives at a fuller understanding of the emergent 
notion of the virtual. 
 
 
2 
 
Historically virtue – or in its Roman guise, virtus – invokes the 
concept of man in terms that are physical.  On one hand, virtus has 
been measured as manly strength:  Hercules was its Renaissance 
ideal.1  On the other hand, virtus has been understood in terms not 
of sheer physical power but of mastery over the body, especially 
under conditions of extreme mental stress.  Thus the virtue of a 
soldier – which the Greeks called arête and which the Latin word 
initially translated – lay in his ability to control the body’s impulses 
amid the chaos of the battlefield, to hold his ground when the mind 
screamed, “Flee!” 
 
 
3 
 
As Alasdair MacIntyre has suggested, Plato’s account of the virtues 
in the Republic was “part of his strategy to expel the Homeric 
inheritance from the city-state.”2  This coöpted virtue for the 
scholar and turned the word away from the purview of Homeric 
heroes, who were non-reflective and physical (as opposed to 
metaphysical).  Even here the root connection to marshalling the 
body’s resources is evident:  the virtues were the undisputed 
crystalline centers – of character, of soul – that make the wise man 
 
Russell Scott Valentino 144 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
and teacher consistent with himself at all times.  Both the 
Aristotelian understanding of the virtues (as dispositions cultivated 
for acting or feeling in particular ways) and the Kantian view 
(where acting virtuously means acting against personal inclination) 
preserved the term’s bodily core.  The Aristotelian thought more of 
exercising, the Kantian more of exorcising, but both measured 
virtue in relation to the body’s “honesty.”3 
 
4 
 
The virtuous woman, particularly according to eighteenth- and 
nineteenth-century moralists, might be said to control her body, 
except that sexual “liberation” took that vocabulary for itself.  The 
heart of the issue here is not physical or even metaphysical but 
political.  In other words, whether or not the virtuous woman had 
control over her body in relation to her mind was secondary.  
When her body was at the disposal of the family, particularly its 
male heads, the woman was represented as maintaining her virtue 
in the face of the world’s multitudinous inconstancies.  When a 
woman became the measure of her own worth and took charge of 
her own decisions about how to live, with whom, and under what 
conditions, virtue was represented as having been “corrupted.”  
When a family lost control over her body, she was said to lose her 
virtue.  All the while, paradoxically in the context of virtue’s 
historical roots, she was gaining greater control over her body. 
 
 
5 
 
The virtuoso is one who masters the difficulties of manipulating 
the body to achieve amazing feats of agility.  Thus in music, a 
virtuoso performer is one who sees an action with the mind’s eye 
and translates it instantly, with no apparent effort, into bodily 
motion and sound.  This sense of virtue as effect, and the virtuoso 
as one whose success is measured by effectiveness in action, is 
familiar to scholars of Machiavelli.  It also provides a possible 
provenance for at least one sense of virtual reality, namely, as that 
which is as effective as reality (see also below).4 
 
 
6 
 
Virtual also could be understood primarily as a kind of corporeal 
honesty, at least until recently.  To call someone a virtual dictator 
has been to assert something that might not be plain from 
appearance.  For the person making this claim, the virtue, or 
capacity, of such a dictator would manifest an underlying state:  
some real or essential being not immediately apparent, a concealed 
corpus.  In a similar manner, to call someone a virtual saint would 
be to ascribe an “undisputed crystalline center” to that person, 
despite its perhaps not being perceived. 
 
 
Russell Scott Valentino 145 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
7 
 
A linkage to land is a prominent constituent of classical republican 
virtue.  Machiavelli wrote that the vigor of an uncorrupt republic, 
like that of an invincible army, proceeds from a society of 
independent freeholders used to hard work and bred to endure 
discomfort.  The natural and virtuous attachment is to land, but 
not in a transcendental sense.  The ground for virtue is not the 
Earth, Gaia, or any such post-Romantic entity; it is property, a 
binding social construction that links a person to others in a 
particular way.  Land as property gives an individual weight and 
value within a group.  It helps provide what Hegel, at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, conceived as the conditions of mutual 
recognition.  Related figures range from “being rooted” to “getting 
around,” and these mutually defining extremes highlight telling 
shifts in the conceptualization of virtue over time.  In maintaining 
a republic, virtue evoked the need for “rooted” citizens.  In 
protecting public morality in the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries, virtue invoked the need for sexual constancy, especially 
by women, in modern society.  In advancing sexual and political 
liberation in the twentieth century, virtue provoked the need for 
active authenticity by individuals of both sexes.5 
 
 
8 
 
The virtual saint whose saintly corpus is somehow concealed from 
the view of the church hierarchy, and the virtual saint who provides 
confession in an online “virtual confessional” appear separated by 
a conceptual divide.  One is real but unrecognized, the other 
recognized but unreal.  What links them is effect, force, or power; 
and this is the sense of virtue that remains in the English phrase 
“by virtue of.”  The Oxford English Dictionary reports a 
seventeenth-century use of “virtual church” to mean “a council or 
similar body acting in the name of the whole church.”  This is not a 
digital body that recognizes virtual saints who man virtual 
confessionals.  Yet it is “capable of producing a certain effect or 
result.”  In this sense, the virtual is “effective, potent, powerful,” 
and – according to the same source – obsolete.  But is it? 
 
 
9 
 
Beyond popular culture, the question of the reality of virtual reality 
surfaces in a variety of disciplines from artificial intelligence and 
psychology to political theory and law.6  There the issue is precisely 
the effect or power of virtual phenomena.7  The importance of 
these discussions lies less in verbal answers than in the ways the 
conversations alter our orientations to things and people, in how 
we position bodies of various kinds in relation to one another.  To 
the extent that our world is one of “consensual fantasy” as J.G.A. 
Pocock has written or a “symbolic public order” in the terms of 
Slavoj Žižek, virtual phenomena may not pose much of a change.  It 
 
Russell Scott Valentino 146 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
has been several centuries, after all, that we have been actively 
cultivating “the exchange of forms of mobile property” and “modes 
of consciousness suited to a world of moving objects” with values 
that rise and fall with the apparent sense and order of rumor.8  
Isn’t the virtual simply part of a long process, every step of which 
we have learned to accept with virtuoso flexibility?  The question is 
not how real – and therefore how liberating or dangerous – are 
virtual phenomena, but how different they are from the already 
“unreal” phenomena that fill our daily lives. 
 
10 
 
Having written these words, I must step back – embodied as I am 
– to acknowledge that the virtual challenge is not some 
simulacrum of a challenge but a real challenge that involves the 
advent of things virtual:  virtual documents, virtual hospitals, 
virtual pornography, even virtual empathy.  These challenge the 
virtues evoked here.  They challenge identity, sexuality, sociality, 
and political health.  And they turn on a pivotal question:  In a 
virtual world, what constitutes authentic control over bodies, 
whether physical, social, or political?  Just about every word in the 
question provokes further issues, and this essay only sketches a 
framework for initiating responses to them.  Rather than digging 
deeper philologically, let me pose the question in another form. 
 
 
11 
 
My nine-month-old son lifts his hand then opens and closes his 
fingers when prompted by the sound “Bye-bye!”  He smiles and 
seems pleased without truly understanding the gesture or the word 
that accompanies it.  If he understood after all, he might be sad, 
not happy, when asked to perform it upon Papa’s departure for 
work.  He looks at his fingers, rising and falling as if they are not 
him or at least not his body, alien entities he is only slowly learning 
to control.  It is not yet a virtuoso performance.  Nevertheless I 
know one day he will make the conceptual connections to enter the 
realm of consensual fantasy, to join us there and dwell among us to 
the end of his days.  I suspect he will linger on its fringes for some 
time, uncertain as to what it means to enter, just as now he is 
uncertain as to what it means to wave to Papa, who is smiling 
stupidly with his own hand flopping in the air beyond the glass of 
the kitchen door.  And I am struck by a possibility:  If one day he 
makes the conceptual connection from virtue to virtual and if, 
being a thoroughly contemporary child, he understands the virtual 
but sees virtue only at the dim periphery of his life’s experience, he 
may very well ask, “Papa, what is virtue?”  What, I wonder, will I 
tell him? 
 
Russell Scott Valentino 147 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
 
 
© Russell Scott Valentino, 2003. 
 
 
 
 Notes  
 
 
 
1     This was the image reborn, if not created anew, by Renaissance 
writers and artists, who saw Hercules as the vir perfectissimus, a 
symbol of “virtue in all its aspects – physical, moral, spiritual, and 
even intellectual.”  Karl G. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme:  The 
Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the 
Twentieth Century, Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Littlefield, 1972, p. 
197. 
 
 
 
 
2     Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Notre Dame, IN, University 
of Notre Dame Press, 1984, p. 131.  
 
 
 
3     Honestas is the other Latin word sometimes used to translate 
the Greek arête.  On the difference between a plural and a singular 
usage – the virtues as opposed to virtue – with particular attention 
to the history of Stoicism, see ibid., pp. 168-70. 
 
 
 
 
4        I am indebted to John Nelson, of the University of Iowa, for 
pointing out the importance of this connection.  
 
 
 
5     For a cogent discussion of the trend towards feminizing virtue 
with the rise of bourgeois culture, see Terry Mulcaire, “Public 
Credit:  Or, the Feminization of Virtue in the Marketplace,” PMLA, 
114, 5, October, 1999, pp. 1029-1042. 
 
 
 
 
6     Noteworthy examples include Sherry Turkle, Life on the 
Screen:  Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, Simon and 
Schuster, 1997; Cass Sunstein, Republic.com, Princeton, NJ, 
Princeton University Press, 2001. 
 
 
 
 
7     Sunstein goes so far as to make governmental policy 
recommendations that might counteract the socially fragmentary 
effects of the internet.  His is essentially a variation on a very old 
riff: while clearly powerful, consensual fantasy may also “unleash” 
the dark forces that will destroy us.  Turkle’s approach is more 
descriptive and empirical, while her suggestions about the fluidity 
of current identity formation among young people are less easily 
contextualized within the conceptions of virtue noted in this essay. 
 
 
 
 
8     J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:  Florentine 
Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, 
Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 464.  Slavoj  
Russell Scott Valentino 148 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
Žižek’s phrase is from his Sublime Object of Ideology, London, 
Verso, 1989, p. 68. 
                        
 


English

From the Challenge of Virtue to the Challenges of Virtual

McLeod, Kembrew

Cease and Desist: Freedom of Expression in the Shadows of Intellectual Property

Beer, Francis A

Boynton, G. R

Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 117 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
Globalizing Terror 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 
Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1 
 
 
In the aftermath of the attack on September 11, 2001 British Prime Minister 
Tony Blair said, "Never forget how we felt watching the planes fly into those 
twin towers.”   There is nothing extraordinary about his statement until you 
think about what he did not say.  He did not say the people of New York City 
watched.  He did not say the people of New York and New Jersey watched.  
He did not say Americans watched.  He was speaking to and for the world, 
and he said that we watched and felt.  The change in the speed of 
communication over the past fifty years has produced a revolution.  For the 
first time in human history the shot was heard around the world.  
 
 
2 
 
Terror has existed through human history, but it has become a critical 
political issue since 9/11.  The political use of terror, terrorism, is the subject 
of a growing library of work.  Amazon lists almost 4000 books for terrorism 
and terrorists, including five encyclopedias of terrorism.  There is also an 
extensive literature in scholarly journals and the popular press.  Among 
other things, this work describes the psychological profiles of terrorists; the 
extent to which they are rational or irrational; the political, social, 
economic, and cultural environments that encourage them; public reactions 
 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 118 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
to terrorism; possible and probable future terrorist scenarios; and strategies 
for controlling future terrorism (Healy et al. 2002).  
 
3 
 
The visual media have provided a feast of terrorist coverage, allowing the 
world to move from reading about terrorism to, as the Prime Minister said, 
watch it - in real time and in replay.  The globalization of terror is something 
new.  It goes hand in hand with the globalization of the media.  The creation 
of new media technology has created a public space in which political actors 
may perform:   Terrorists are some of the actors who can now play on a 
global stage (see Norris, Just, and Kern 2003; Greenberg and Thompson 
2002; Hachten and Scrotton 2002; Nacos 2002; Nelson and Boynton 1997; 
Alali and Byrd 1994; Livingston 1994).  
 
 
4 
 
We trace this change.  We began in 1998 and have recorded between 200 
and 250 news broadcasts a year.  We started with CNN's WorldView.  In 
2001 we switched to BBC's World News.  In this analysis we examine how 
the global news media handle terror -- the globalization of terror.  The 
analysis is in three parts:   (1) what terror becomes in global broadcasting; 
(2) terror and the synchronization of global media; and (3) how terror 
becomes us.  
 
 
 
 What Terror Becomes  
 
5 
 
For a year the world watched the Kosovars living in terror.  Finally, the 
world said that it had enough, a brief war ensued, the terror abated -- 
though the hardships continued.  And the world stopped watching.   
 
6 
 
The Kosovars had no monopoly on terror, of course.  Today the Israelis and 
the Palestinians are living out mutually assured terror.  The Afghans lived in 
terror.  The East Timorese, the Eritreans, the Iraquis and the list goes on.   
 
7 
 
The global media are there -- at least for a time -- making it possible for us 
to watch.  What do they show us? What does terror become in the global 
media?  
 
8 
 
Kosovo is one case among many.  By looking carefully at this case, one can 
see the elements that appear over and over in the reporting.  Living in terror 
is told as threat and attack, fear and escape, and shock and mourning.  
 
9 
 
Here we focus on the threat of terror. 
 
 
10 
 
The Yugoslav government construed the Kosova Liberation Army as a 
terrorist organization.  Fighting terrorists is war, and there are no limits on 
what the government can do.   
Terrorists hide everywhere.  The government cannot tell a terrorist from a 
 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 119 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
non-terrorist.  Hence, every male is a candidate.  There is no limit on who 
can be rounded up for interrogation.   
The Yugoslav police went door to door searching for weapons and searching 
for men.  It was the moment the family had dreaded.  The man was taken 
away by the police.  “Go inside, don't 
be afraid,” he shouted to his family.   
But many men did not come back.   
The threat does not go away because 
there are no limits on what the 
government can do.  At any moment 
the police may show up and take 
anybody away -- never to return.   
 
11 
 
There are no limits on what the police may destroy.  Any house, any 
structure is a potential  
hiding place for KLA fighters.  One day, 
any day, they can destroy.  "They came 
into our main street,” the man said, 
“and then shelled our house."  
For everyone whose house had not 
been destroyed this was the threat.  If 
they did it there, if they did it then, they 
can do it here and now.  The threat is 
ever present -- until you have been 
destroyed. 
 
 
12 
 
There are no limits on whom they can shoot.  If anyone may be a KLA 
terrorist, then anyone can be shot as soon as they do something the least bit 
suspicious.   
Trying to escape from the police is 
definitely suspicious.  So the woman 
was shot. 
The threat is not so much what they 
have done to you as it is what they may 
do to you.  It is what you dread; it is 
what may happen.  Terror is living with 
what may happen.  
 
 
13 
 
People tried to escape the threat by hiding in the countryside.  That could 
work in the summer, it could work if you were willing to live without 
housing and without food.  It could work until you were found.  Then the  
Click to download video 
 
Click to download video 
Click to download video 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 120 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
survivors mourned.  
 
 
14 
 
As the global media tell the story, terror becomes threat, attempting to 
escape the threat, and mourning when escape fails.   
   On the Same Page  
 
15 
 
There are many similarities in news broadcasting around the world.  For 
example, the anchor and the anchor desk are ubiquitous.  
   
WorldView BBC World News China 
   
Croatia Dubai Germany 
   
Korea Russia Vietnam 
 
 
Escape to the Countryside 
Click to download video 
Mourning When Escape Fails 
Click to download video 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 121 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
16 
 
Atlanta, Washington, New York, London -- China, Croatia, Dubai, Germany, 
Korea, Russia, Vietnam -- the anchor or anchors are managing the 
broadcast sitting behind a desk and in front of a map and screen display.   
 
17 
 
In addition to the other similarities, there is the story of the day -- the story 
found in almost every media outlet.  The story of the day is well known in 
the U.S.  But there is a story of the day in news broadcasting around the 
world, as well.  The world is synchronized in what it is shown as important.  
 
 
18 
 
The day was April 5, 2002.  The Israeli invasion of Palestine was nine days 
old.  Around the world the story of the day was the Israeli army terrorizing 
Palestinians and Palestinians fighting back.  Terror was the centerpiece of 
the news from the Middle East.   
There were tanks in the streets of 
Ramallah and Palestinian gunmen firing 
automatic weapons.  There were 
helicopters attacking and destroying 
buildings.  But the story of the day 
seemed to be the small arms fire as 
gunmen ran the length of a street.  That 
one scene was repeated over and over in 
the news broadcasts we found. 
 
 
19 
 
Forest fires in California, flooding in Europe and Bangladesh, an election in 
Germany -- they are all world news.  But none synchronizes global 
broadcasting as terror does.  We are all on the same page when terror is the 
story of the day.  
 
 
 
 
How Terror Becomes Us 
 
 
20 
 
Tony Blair said that we watched, and we did.  
 
Click to download video 
Click to download video 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 122 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
21 
 
During the first twenty-five seconds, a news reporter explains to anyone 
who needs explanation what we are seeing.  Then we are thrust into a 
crowd.  We are in the midst of shouting, screaming, shock, disbelief.  We 
feel the terror when we see through the eyes of the victims.  
 
 
 
22 
 
It begins with a scream and a replay of the crash into the tower and the 
tower burning.  The images set the story.  This is where the grief comes 
from.  The voice of a victim -- a telephone message for her husband, 
recorded as she was waiting for death.  And a wedding picture of the victim.  
Then the picture of a flight attendant -- shown over the American flag.  And 
her husband, sitting in front of a flag, recounting her call.  
 
 
23 
 
The camera moves back to show the large number of lives that have been 
destroyed.  Then it moves in -- filling the screen with the face of a wife, then 
a father.  Pictures of searching wreckage, pictures of a victim, then the 
screen is filled with the face of the wife.  Finally, back to the destroyed 
buildings.  The carnage of the lives is reinforced with images of the carnage 
on the ground.  
 
Click to download video 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 123 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
24 
 
We cannot miss the terror.  Terror becomes us when we are called upon to 
remember.  The news media remind viewers over and over about the event.  
It becomes a constant point of departure for news, as the sights and sounds 
are repeated and repeated.  And we are called to remember.  
 
 
 
25 
 
The global media brings terror to us all.  
 
 
 
 Conclusion  
 
26 
 
It begins with technology.  The time required to communicate from 
anywhere to anywhere is now measured in seconds.  Global communication 
has always been possible -- if you were willing to wait.  But waiting only 
seconds brings new meaning to 'global communication' and creates a new 
human reality.  
 
 
27 
 
Kosovo, Israel-Palestine, the twin towers -- terror is not a sometime thing.  
Man's inhumanity toward his fellow men makes terror constant in human 
affairs.  Not very long ago most of the terror was hidden -- beyond our 
willingness to wait for the news.  That is no longer true.  We experience the 
terror around the world as it happens.  
 
    
 
 
 References  
 
 
 
Alali, O.  and G.  W.  Byrd. (1994).  Terrorism and the Media:   A Selected, 
Annotated Bibliography.  Jefferson, NC: McFarland.   
 
 
 
Greenberg, B.  S.  and M.  T.  Thompson, eds.  (2002).Communication and 
Terrorism:  Public and Media Responses to 9/11.  Mount Waverly:  
Hampton Press.   
Click to download video 
Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton 124 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
 
 
Hachten, W.  A.  and J.  Francis. (2002).  The World News Prism:  Global 
Media in an Era of Terrorism.  Ames: Iowa State University Press.   
 
 
 
Healy, A.  F., J.  M.  Hoffman, F.  A.  Beer, and L.  E.  Bourne, Jr.  (2002). 
"Terrorists and Democrats:  Individual Reactions to International 
Attacks." Political Psychology, 23, 3, pp. 439-467.   
 
 
 
Livingston, S.  (1994).  The Terrorism Spectacle.  Boulder: Westview Press.  
 
 
 
 
Nacos, B.L.  (2002).  Mass-Mediated Terrorism:  The Central Role of the 
Media in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism.  Lanham:  Rowman 
and Littlefield.   
 
 
 
Nelson, J.  S.  and G.  R.  Boynton. (1997).  Video Rhetorics.  Urbana:  
University of Illinois Press.   
 
 
 
Norris, P., M.  Just, and M.  Kern (2003).  Framing Terrorism:  
Understanding Terrorist Threats and Mass Media.  New York NY:  
Routledge.  
 
 
 
 
 
© Francis A.  Beer and G.  R.  Boynton, 2002.  
 
     


Globalizing Terror

Condit, Celeste M

 
 
Celeste M. Condit 7 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
 Rhetorical Invention 
A  Posthumanist 
Archaeological Expedition 
Celeste M. Condit 
Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
 
     
 
 
 11/22/2426  
 
1 
 
John Allen Smith settles the leather patches on his corduroy jacket 
comfortably into place on the table in front of him, picks up 
document #1510112226 from site #101122264143 and begins to 
read: 
 
 
 
 
11.22.2726 (Earth Temporal Reference)  
 
 
2 
 
Dolph Waters (a Homo varietas cetacea-chloroplast) is about to 
begin a Telling.  An audience of forty posthumans have gathered 
for this rare laryngeal communication event, including 
distinguished members of the knowledge teams of the most 
numerous subspecies – the ariels and the arboreals – as well as a 
few spacemods. 
 
 
3 
 
Dolph is wearing ground-based attire out of respect for the 
location and traditions of Tellings, including dark, loosely fitting 
stretch pants and a brilliant turquoise tunic that contrasts nicely 
with the green tint of per’s photosynthesizing skin. Per’s 
shimmering hair is swept up in a peak to emphasize that per’s 
biogenic gills have recently been enhanced with the latest 
nanelectronic implants, which are made of a cerametal alloy with a 
midnight blue sheen. Dolph’s forearm transceiver is also 
conspicuously bared, as it is the latest model. The Explorer’s Cross 
dangles from a brilliant golden chain around per’s neck. The hum 
of transceiver-mediated communication fades in the room and 
Dolph Waters begins to Tell: 
 
 
4 
 
“I am so aroused to have this Telling for you on behalf of my 
knowledge team.”  For several days, Dolph has diligently practiced 
using the organic speech apparatus with which per was born, but 
the regular reliance on the more efficient transceiver for 
communication that is common among most of the Homo sapiens 
varieties shows in the muffling of most consonants. Dolph clears 
 
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 8 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
per throat and stretches the muscles around the mouth, and 
continues. 
 
5 
 
“I will Tell you first of our discovery of the artifacts and then of the 
conclusions of our study of them.  
 
6 
 
“My partners and I were conducting a Zalvin-assisted exploration 
in the sea-caves off the Southeastern Coast of Northern America 
(at 24• 37’ N 77• 48’ W) when we stumbled across an odd pile of 
ancient wreckage.  We immediately encased it in plasflo-wrap to 
avoid further damage and began to move it carefully to the Middle 
Sea Laboratory, releasing pressure slowly from the plasflo-wrap 
through osmosis over a course of days as we moved it gradually 
upward and northward to the Lab.  At the lab, it was necessary to 
construct another docking bay around it before detailed research 
could begin, because the plasflo-package was 355 square meters 
(the size of five waterpolo baths strung together!). 
 
 
7 
 
“By this time, external analysis had confirmed that this was an 
ancient ‘airplane.’  For those of you who are not specialists in the 
pre-Divergence eras, an ‘airplane’ is a primitive mechanical device 
used by Homo sapiens sapiens for moving self and materials 
through the atmosphere to shift geographic locations. 
 
 
8 
 
“As best as the knowledge team could determine, this airplane had 
crashed over relatively shallow water, and much of it had been 
immediately swept into a cave, the conformation of which had 
soon changed (perhaps due to the impact of Sagan’s Comet) and 
thus preserved from strong ocean currents. 
 
 
9 
 
“As you can imagine, we were enormously excited when we were 
finally able to breach the plasflo-wrap and examine the artifacts 
directly. But we lifted piece after piece of metal in perplexity.  How 
would we ever make sense of this wreckage?  If we had known 
more about pre-Divergence Homos we might have been able to 
make sense of the highly polished wreckage.  But given how little 
remained of the records from that era after the great solar flares, it 
was almost impossible to figure out what the pieces of metal once 
had been. 
 
 
10 
 
“Just as our disappointment grew to despair, however, we located 
a small box that appears to have been a carrying case.  Within that 
case, a wrapper had somehow managed to keep the contents air 
and watertight for 700 years.  Yes! we were able to date the 
contents to that pre-Divergence period because of the treasure 
 
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 9 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
trove of data it provided. 
 
11 
 
“The contents of the box appears to have been associated with a 
person by the peculiar name of Heavenly Gutters.  Of course, our 
translation of that may not be exactly right, because our grasp of 
early Internationalish still has its rough spots, especially when it 
comes to their naming practices.  In any event, the box contained a 
‘videotape,’ which was a device used for recording two dimensional 
moving images with accompanying sound, also several books (get 
this – made of paper and cardboard!) and a pile of primitive 
computer data storage chips.  Although the chips were 
cumbersome for the relatively small amount of data they stored, 
altogether this trove literally doubled the infobits we had about 
pre-Divergence Homos. 
 
 
12 
 
“So what does this stored data tell us? 
 
 
13 
 
“Obviously we are far from finished with analyses.  The first 
challenge was simply to understand the significance of the 
materials.  We were enormously confused for a long time, because 
these early species mixed True Tellings and Imaginings in ways 
unusual to the modes of Thinking-Together that are allowed to us 
by the transceiver.  We finally determined that the videotape 
contained an elaborate Imagining about the transformation from 
Homo sapiens to post-Homo sapiens.  It was named GATTACA.  
Two of the paper books were Imaginings that shared a title of Star 
Trek, and they also imagined post-human futures.  The other book, 
written by someone named ‘Foucault’ (we can’t decipher that 
name) talked a lot about post-humanism. 
 
 
14 
 
“For the rest of this Telling I will explain how we think the pre-
genemod Homos thought about the impending arrival of the 
Divergence and their modes of thought in general, and save other 
topics for later Tellings.” 
 
 
15 
 
“That is,” Dolph thought to perself, “if I ever do another Telling!  
This is such an exhausting way of communicating!  How in the 
world did they ever accomplish anything in science when they used 
oral conferences?”  Per stretched the mouth again and continued. 
 
 
16 
 
“The Homo sapiens sapiens (for that is what they called 
themselves) seemed to realize that the Knowledge was growing in a 
way that would produce the Divergence, but their understanding of 
it was shockingly spotty.  At least, the Foucault apparently believed 
that the divergence would be superior to the ‘dominant hegemony’ 
 
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 10 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
(by which we think per meant the way of Being that had existed for 
approximately two hundred years on two continents).  However, 
per’s discussion of post-Humanism made absolutely no mention of 
the biological transformation of the species!  The Foucault 
accurately predicted the breakdown of solitary consciousness and 
of -gendering, for per wrote about the ‘end of man’ and the ‘social 
determination of consciousness.’  This suggested that the 
knowledge teams had in mind the use of transceivers. But the 
transceiver was dependent on organo-electronic modifications that 
are not mentioned in any other of the works in the collection.  And 
we do not understand how per thought that the breakdown of bi-
gendering would happen without genemod.  That is truly baffling. 
 
17 
 
“The Foucault’s silence on the genetic transformation of Homo 
sapiens sapiens into Homo varietas is even more perplexing given 
the attention devoted to genemod in the rest of the works in the 
Gutters’ collection.  One of the Star Trek books refers extensively 
to genetic modification, though it treated the use of genetic 
technologies as the source of great strife and even referred to 
purported ‘Gene Wars.’  In fact, almost all of the materials that 
recognize the biological nature of post-humanism treat it as an 
undesired event!  According to Heavenly Gutters’ notes, there was 
a Nelkin-and-Lindee team and a Katz-and-Rothman team who 
were both very influential, and both argued that genemodification 
would lead to a greater level of illness in the population!  They 
suggested that some people would not want to be genemod (if you 
can imagine that), and that those who did not would be treated 
badly. 
 
 
18 
 
“While the Foucault treated post-humanism as good, these 
knowledge teams thought of it as anti-humanism.  It makes me 
shudder to think that the Divergence might not have happened if 
these primitive beings had had their way.  You and I, and all our 
procreants, would not be here today.  There would be only the 
primitive Homo sapiens sapiens, condemned to tread the surface 
of this planet in a second dark age, with their short lives, limited 
communication abilities, and diseased, limited bodies.  (That is, if 
they could have survived the Great Heat and great solar flares!)  
There would be no life on the other planets of our solar system, or 
those nearby.  We are fortunate indeed that Knowledge is more 
powerful than narcissism. 
 
 
19 
 
“My Telling cannot end there, however.  For the discovery that 
Homos at the dawn of the Divergence saw these changes as great  
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 11 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
looming evils demands us to wonder about the thinking 
mechanisms of these Homo sapiens sapiens (humph!).  Among 
Heavenly Gutters’ extensive notes (thanks be that per was such a 
careful note-taker and packer!), there are some strong clues – 
though, of course, we cannot posit Knowledge QED of the minds of 
an extinct sub-species, one whose DNA-print has been lost to the 
drifts of time. 
 
20 
 
“If, however, we correlate Gutters’ notes on a primitive textbook on 
genetics that per carried with per's notes on works by the Aristotle 
knowledge team, two books called Before the Analysis and After 
the Analysis, we begin to guess their problem. 
 
 
21 
 
“(Please excuse the species-centrism, but one can only describe 
their thought processes with negative terms, given what we know 
of them).  
 
22 
 
“The Aristotle’s statement of how thinking was to be conducted 
was very linear and gridlike.  Apparently the mode of thought in 
the pre-biotic era resembled the simple mechanical processes such 
as gravity and movement on the scale of an organic, sentient 
monod.  We suppose it makes some sense that Homo sapiens 
sapiens had thought structures tailored to the immediate 
functional requirements of the entity for survival.  This may have 
been almost inevitable in an era where Natural Selection was the 
only design principle for Beings (as opposed to the post-Biotic era, 
where Imaginings and Knowledges might guide design beyond 
pre-existing functionalities). 
 
 
23 
 
“It appears, however, that the coming of the biotic era introduced 
new potentials for thought.  The operation on the microscopic 
scale and the focus on biology opened the possibility for thought 
structures that were not governed by monod level sentience and 
inorganic structures.  In fact, Gutters’s notes refer to the rise of 
‘post-structuralism,’ though these are confusing and do not seem 
to relate directly to botic thought.  Per’s notes also mention ‘Chaos 
theory’ and ‘Complexity theory’ which refer to dynamic structuring 
and non-grid, non-linear thought structures.  Again‘Chaos theory’ 
and ‘Complexity theory’ are only proto-components of biotic 
thought.  They do not account for the full range of organo-
dynamism, but they do constitute a substantial move up from 
mechanistic thought. 
 
 
24 
 
“In any case, it is intriguing to read the primitive genetic primary 
school teaching book in light of the incipience of biotic thought.   
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 12 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
The teaching book, called Genes IV and written by Lewin, is clearly 
trying to convey the Knowledge of genetics (as limited as it then 
was) in the approved forms of advanced Aristotelian (that is, 
mechanistic) thought.  However, several chapters of that book 
break through into incipient bioticism, in spite of the author’s 
intentions.  It appears that even the scientists of the era were still 
not fully aware of the broad implications of genemod and 
bioticism.  It is, of course, perplexing that both scientific and post-
humanistic scholarship in that era was not even as sophisticated as 
the Imaginings of the era with regard to genemod.  But so it 
appears. 
 
25 
 
“Dear friends, this Telling has tired me, but though my Telling 
must end, the Knowing has no ending, for much more waits to be 
done, and a Telling is only a fragmentary sharing.  You will 
undoubtedly want to turn to the data bodies to absorb the richness 
of this treasure upon which we are so grateful to have 
stumbled.  Thank you for sharing your presence with us. On behalf 
of Knowledge Team Dolphinus 2, I, 6,500.1, live long and 
prosper.” 
 
 
26 
 
John Allen Smith puts down the document.  “Humph!” he says out 
loud.  “Another silly speculation of the 21st Century,” he thinks to 
himself, as he heads off for another cup of tea.  But as he turns 
toward the faculty lounge, he begins to mull and to categorize what 
he has read, in good scholarly fashion. 
 
 
27 
 
“This account pretty much follows the psychological pattern for 
essays of its genre, which have already been well documented.  
Alas, nothing new to write about here.  In the pre-reflective era, 
when new scientific discoveries were made, technological cultures 
imagined their implications in romantic and even fantastic terms.  
Some of the accounts were utopian and some dystopian, but they 
almost always centered on the direct physical impact of the 
technology on human nature, thereby expressing and repressing 
the species’ inherit angst over its mortality and countless other 
frailties.” 
 
 
28 
 
“Actually,” Smith continues in his inner monologue, “this is quite 
an archetypal case of the utopian genre.  It exhibits an absolute 
degree of the neglect of the materiality of being that generally 
pervades technological utopianism, ignoring the costs and trade-
offs of bio-modification.  Indeed, instead of remaking the species 
into ‘posthumans,’ genetics has primarily provided some marginal 
utility in agriculture and constituted a powerful tool for medical 
 
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 13 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
research.  But as of 2426, there still has been no mass adoption of 
genetic technology for human genetic selection or modification. 
 
29 
 
“The early speculators ignored the fact that natural evolution had 
taken millions of years to evolve the resistance of organic systems 
to foreign DNA.  Overcoming those resistances is simply too 
costly.  There are better ways to treat illness.  And merging 
genomes is too complicated.  The benefits just don’t justify the 
costs.  It’s a lot easier to build mechanical augmentation and 
protection.” 
 
 
30 
 
Smith turned the corner, and put his hand out to open the oak-
paneled lounge door.  “On the other hand,” the thought hit him, 
“this manuscript does correctly critique the failure of post-
structuralist theorists to engage issues of human biology with any 
depth and systematicity.  The post-humanists critiqued the 
biological sciences, and they denied the significance of biology, 
trumpeting the significance of their own venue of operations – the 
cultural.  But they refused, adamantly, to incorporate biology into 
their theoretical account of humans and human systems.  I don’t 
think anyone has reported on that yet.” 
 
 
31 
 
“Yes!  That will provide the hook I need for my presentation at the 
International Society of the History of Post-structuralism next 
month.”  
 
32 
 
As he dropped his tea-bag into the cup of hot water to let it steep, 
he reached for the newspaper.  The headline read, “FOUCAULT’S 
COMET TO IMPACT EARTH: PRESIDENT URGES NO PANIC.”  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
Acknowledgments:  I thank an anonymous reviewer and Bruce 
Railsback for their feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.  
I also thank the audience at the National Communication 
Conference 2000 for their indulgence of my performance of the 
role of Dolph Waters.  I appreciate their willingness to stretch out 
of the normal scholarly genre into a mode that is unfamiliar.  This 
piece employs neither a scholarly genre nor the science fiction 
genre, but a hybrid of the two, undertaken for the purpose of 
reframing old ideas and looking at them from a different 
perspective, but doing so within an academic community with 
shared literatures, vocabularies and problems that are somewhat 
more narrow than those of interest to the larger audience of 
science fiction writing. 
 
 
 
Celeste M. Condit 14 Poroi, 1, 1, January, 2001 
 
  
 
The notion that human animal hybrids might be a good thing was 
first driven home to me by Victor Milan’s Star Trek® novel, From 
the Depths, though I had previously encountered it in Brian 
Stableford’s Future Man.  I owe the truly radical concept of 
photosynthesizing skin to Nancy Kress’s Beggar’s Ride, and I 
borrow the use of the non-gendered pronoun “per” from Marge 
Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if 
this little innovation could pass from science fiction into general 
usage? 
 
 
 
 © Celeste M. Condit, 2001.  
                        
      


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