Critiques of Knowing: Situated Textualities in Science, Computing and The Arts

Exploring what happens to science and computing when we think of them as texts. author Lynette Hunter weaves together such vast areas of thought as: rhetoric, politics, AI, computing, feminism, science studies, aesthetics and epistemology. Hunter takes the recent work on "situated knowledge" and argues that since we cannot have knowledge without communication, we need to think long and hard about textual strategies used when we try to locate knowledge in or from a particular place. She argues that the feminist standpoint critique of science hasn't considered the textual implications for such an approach and suggests that the arts and humanities are just as far behind in terms of democratizing access and evaluation, as the sciences. The text argues that what we need is a radical shake-up of approaches to the arts if the critiques of science and computing are to come to any fruition.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. The Ethos of the Nation State: Idelology, Discourse and Standpoint 2. Rhetoric and Artificial Intellegence: Computing applications in the sciences, Computing applications in the arts. 3. AI and Representation: A Study of a rhetorical context for intellectual legitimacy 4. The Socialising of Context: Methodologies for Hypertext Topical reasoning in the history of rhetoric Topical reasoning in hypertexts 5. Feminist Critiques of Science: From Standpoint to Rhetorical Stance Recapitulation Bridgework 6. A Feminist Critique of the Rhetorical Stance o Contemporary Aesthetics: Alternative StandpointsFootnotesBibliography

About the Author :
Lynette Hunter is Professor of the History of Rhetoric at University of Leeds. She is the author of several books including Rhetorical Space, Outsider Notes: Feminist Approaches to Ideology, Modern Allegory and Fantasy and Writing/Reading, and Publishing

Review :
'This is a dazzling book; in scope, in depth, in the originality of its approach and in the crisp confidence of its style. Its place in the study of particular disciplines is clear, but in the broader picture, it is difficult to think of anyone engaged in intellectual work at the end of the twentieth century who would not be the better for reading it.' - Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 'a much needed lexicon for scholars to draw upon.' - C.Jan Swearingen, Texas A & M University