Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies and Words

236 Pages·2017·1.59 MB·English

Clemson University
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All Dissertations Dissertations
8-2014
Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies
and Words
Patricia Fancher
Clemson University, [email protected]
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CHIASMIC RHETORIC:
ALAN TURING BETWEEN BODIES AND WORDS
A Dissertation
Presented to
the Graduate School of
Clemson University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctorate of Philosophy
Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design
by
Patricia Fancher
August 2014
Accepted by:
Dr. Steven B. Katz, Committee Chair
Dr. Diane Perpich
Dr. Cynthia Haynes
Dr. D. Travers Scott
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

This dissertation analyzes the life and writing of inventor and scientist Alan Turing in
order to define and theorize chiasmic relations between bodies and texts. Chiasmic
rhetoric, as I develop throughout the dissertation, is the dynamic processes between
materials and discourses that interact to construct powerful rhetorical effect, shape
bodies, and also compose new knowledges. Throughout the dissertation, I develop
chiasmic rhetoric as intersecting bodies and discourse, dynamic and productive, and
potentially destabilizing.
Turing is an unusual figure for research on bodily rhetoric and embodied
knowledge. He is often associated with disembodied knowledge and as his inventions are
said to move intelligence towards greater abstraction and away from human bodies.
However, this dissertation exposes the many ways that bodies are active in shaping and
producing knowledge even within Turing’s scientific and technical writing. I identify
how, in every text that Turing produces, chiasmic interactions between bodies and texts
actively compose Turing’s scientific knowledge and technical innovations towards digital
computation and artificial intelligence. His knowledge, thus, is not composed out of
abstract logic, or neutral technological advances. Rather, his knowledge and invention are
composed and in through discourses and embodied experiences. Given that bodies and
discourses are also composed within social and political power dynamics, then the
political, social, and personal embodied experiences that compose Turing’s life and his
embodiment also compose his texts, rhetoric, inventions, and science.
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In Chapter 1, I introduce Alan Turing and the significance of my research for the
fields of rhetoric of science and technology, body studies, and also for our understanding
of Alan Turing’s technical writing. In Chapter Two, I first show that antithesis has been
the primary figure representing the dichotomy between bodies and knowledge. However,
I also draw from feminist science studies and a style analysis of Turing’s essay “Nature
of Spirit” to demonstrate that a strong antithesis between bodies and mind can never be
maintained: bodies can never be totally excluded and bodily presence is rhetorically
significant. In Chapter Three, I define how bodies are always already connected with
discourse: the two can never be separated. In Turing’s article “On Computable Numbers
with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” the intersection between bodies and
texts is significant in the way that Turing draws from his embodied experience
performing calculation in order to invent the Turing Machine, which became an
important theoretical foundation for digital computation.
In Chapter Four, I argue that the chiasmic relation between bodies and texts is
dynamic and productive. The dynamic chiasmus in Turing’s article “Intelligent
Machinery” reveals the ways that Turing’s embodiment as a homosexual man in England
in the 20th century informs his early proposals for how to develop artificial intelligence.
In particular, the very same disciplining—through intervention and a focus on the body—
that compose Turing’s embodied experiences as a subject of sexuality and
governmentality also composes Turing’s proposal for constructing intelligence in
machines. In Chapter 5, I posit that Turing rhetorically constructs a disruptive notion of
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machine intelligence that is embodied, feminine, and performative or imitative. This
finding is of particular importance in the field of science and technology, which is
predominantly known for excluding women as well as qualities associated with
femininity. Turing disrupts traditional expectations in technical writing by feminizing the
machine. His article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” disrupts traditional
definitions of intelligence by making femininity, fallibility, and embodiment central
components that qualify a machine as an intelligent being. In Chapter 6, I conclude by
demonstrating the importance of chiasmic relations between bodies and texts for
technical writing broadly, including the teaching of technical writing. Then I end by
proposing a pedagogy of care and disorientation that are attuned to the complex
embodiment of students interacting with texts in our composition classrooms.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I started this project, I could not have imagined all that I have been able to
accomplish in this dissertation. For his role helping me develop as a scholar, I must thank
Dr. Steven Katz—mentor and friend—who saw my potential and pushed me to reach that
potential. Steve Katz sets a high standard for scholars and he helped me reach that
standard. I am ever thankful and will never be the same. To my committee, Dr. Cynthia
Haynes, Dr. Diane Perpich, and Dr. Travers Scott, I thank you for the support,
encouragement, challenges, time, and energy. With each meeting, each of you helped me
to understand why this research is significant and how I can work to develop its
significance. Cynthia Haynes, I survived this past year with the help of your smile,
laughter, and embrace. I aspire to emulate your example of what a woman scholar can
achieve. I would not be here with out Victor Vitanza, who always trusted and valued my
embodied knowledge. I thank VV for the dis/orientations that brought me so far. I also
thank the Potent Object Project and Brent Pafford. This project saved me from the
isolation of dissertating and enriched my days with stories, communities, friends, voices,
hands, coffee, and so many many mugs.
The Society of the Third Sophistic has been my intellectual family who supported
and challenged me for the past four years. And they will continue to be my intellectual
family as I continue my scholarship. I am especially indebted to Dr. Jared Colton and Dr.
Glen Southergill, who read so much of my writing for 4s years and responded
generously, even when none of us was sure what I was doing. I have so many friends
who have loved, supported, listened, and cared for me. Without them, I would not be who
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I am. I thank Christina Hung for burying me in books and the many other art-practice
coping mechanisms. I thank Per Hoel. Somehow, we made it through together. I could
have done it without him, but I would not have been able to preserve my joy, smile, and
passion.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TITLE PAGE .................................................................................................................................. i

ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................... v

CHAPTER

I. CHIASMIC RHETORIC ......................................................................................... 1

Constructing Alan Turing ................................................................................ 6

Tracing Bodies in Philosophy and Rhetoric ............................................... 11

Chiasmus and Embodiment ............................................................................ 21

Chapter Overview ............................................................................................. 27

II. PRODUCING ANTITHESIS THEN BREAKING ANTITHESIS ......... 30

Turing’s Education ........................................................................................... 32

Alan Turing’s “Nature of Spirit” ................................................................... 34

Form and Rhetoric of Antithesis ................................................................... 42

Identifying Antithesis in “Nature of Spirit” ................................................ 47

Movements of Antithesis ................................................................................ 52

Feminist Critiques of Antithesis .................................................................... 54

Losing Antithesis in “Nature of Spirit” ........................................................ 62

From Antithesis towards a New Figure ...................................................... 64

III. INTERSECTING BODIES AND DISCOURSE ........................................... 67

Defining Chiasmus ............................................................................................ 70

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Universal and Relative Schools of Mathematics ....................................... 74

Chiasmus between Antithesis and Parallelism .......................................... 81

Bodies in Turing’s Mathematics ................................................................... 82

Chiasmus Taking Space and Connecting .................................................... 85

Turing Turns Towards Bodies ...................................................................... 97

Intersecting Bodies without Differences ................................................... 104

IV. DYNAMIC EMBODIMENTS .......................................................................... 108

Dynamic Chiasmus ......................................................................................... 109

Dynamics of Biopolitics ................................................................................. 112

Turing in Transition ...................................................................................... 118

Biographies Constructing Sexuality ........................................................... 121

Machines in Transition .................................................................................. 124

First Manifest on Artificial Intelligence .................................................... 128

Sexuality and Knowledge Production ........................................................ 132

Analysis of Intelligent Machines and Biopower ...................................... 134

Embodying Turing Within Intelligent Machinery ................................ 143

Constructing Posthuman Bodies in the Empire ...................................... 146

Biopower and the Punishment of Alan Turing ........................................ 151

V. DESTABALIZING FORMS .............................................................................. 158

Turing Moves Toward Machine Intelligence .......................................... 160

Destabilizing Chiasmus ................................................................................. 162

Critiques of Machine Intelligence ............................................................... 165

Dynamic Rhetoric ........................................................................................... 168
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Dynamic Rhetorical Bodies .......................................................................... 172

Later Critiques of Machine Intelligence .................................................... 176

Computing Machinery and Intelligence .................................................... 178

Gendering The Turing Test ........................................................................ 182

Turing at the Beginning of Posthumanism .............................................. 189

Gendering Intelligence .................................................................................. 194

VI. COMPOSING WITH CHIASMUS ................................................................. 198

Uncovering Bodies .......................................................................................... 201

Bodies in Composition Theory .................................................................... 207

Chiasmic Pedagogy ......................................................................................... 212

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 217

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