Hailing black holes: Rhetorical realism in the age of hyperobjects

Abstract

This article addresses the challenge philosophical realism poses to the field of rhetoric by exploring the possibility of symbolic communion with nonhuman entities. As a matter of framing, I invoke Timothy Morton’s concept of the hyperobject to better understand the complexities of communicating with and about sublime nonhuman objects such as black holes. I then delineate how the stylistic modality of the weird best exploits the chasm between autonomous thingness and human (re)presentation that is a primary source of consternation for rhetorical realism. Finally, I draw from Kathe Koja’s (1991) novel The Cipher to reconsider a bizarre rhetoric of black holes which displays the omnipresent tension of accessible-alterity characteristic of the struggle to rhetorically breach the nonhuman world.