I’m reading Hans Blumenberg’s essay “An Anthropological Approach to Rhetoric” at the request of an advisor. The request stems from my attempt to start the second of my three preliminary exam reading lists—the list in rhetorical theory. Anyway, I like this quote, among others in the text:

There is something like the expediency of what is not expedient. … Whatever time is saved is always immediately used up. We must increasingly abandon the idea of a model of education or culture [Bildung] that is governed by the norm that man must always know what he is doing. … Of course the circumstantiality that goes with the claim to know what one is doing is not in itself a guarantee of humane or moral insight, but as a pattern of delayed reaction it is potentially also a pattern of ‘conscious’ action.

I am working on finding theoretical links between rhetoric and the intellectual work I am pursing in biomedical ethics and predictive genetics. As of now, I am attracted to the idea of critiquing predictive genetics along the lines of a “critique of capital,” specifically, the use of human tissue as a transnational commodity; however, this approach has seemed much more “cultural studies” than “rhetorical studies.” Blumenberg’s essay is helping me find some links that may justify my project within my own disciplinary boundaries. That of course is the goal: fitting your dissertation through the hoop that is your discipline.