Description
Book SynopsisExamines commonplace conflicting beliefs that technology will either annihilate humanity or preserve humanity from annihilation. Argues that the paradoxical capacities of weapons influence how humanity understands violent conflict.
Trade Review“This is an impressive first book: well researched, carefully argued, and engagingly written. Hill posits ‘technological rhetoric’ as an original, interdisciplinary perspective on Technē’s Paradox. Grounded in thorough readings of rhetorical critique as well as science and technology studies, his longitudinal study of ‘machine rhetoric’ warrants attention both for the cases examined—from Malthus to the Unabomber—and for the individual and collective insights the analysis yields.”
—David Henry,Sanford Berman Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Merging insights from rhetoric, science, and technology studies, Ian Hill analyzes how weapons are simultaneously cast as harbingers of extermination and preservers of peace, revealing novelty and innovation in words about weapons across two centuries. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism is crisply written, thought-provoking, and hauntingly important.”
—Lisa Keränen,author of Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research
Table of ContentsContents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Technē’s Paradox and Weapons Rhetoric1. Thomas Malthus’s Population Bomb as a Pre-Text for Technē’s Paradox2. Preaching Dynamite: August Spies at the Haymarket Trial3. Humane, All Too Humane: The Chemical-Weapons Advocacyof Major General Amos A. Fries4. Toward a Peaceful Bomb: Leo Szilard’s Paradoxical Life5. Industrial Antipathy: Irreparability and Ted Kaczynski’s IEDsConclusion: In the Presence of Weapons and RhetoricNotesBibliographyIndex
