Between campus and planet: Toward a posthumanist paideia

Over the last decade, humanities advocates have called for public support of liberal arts education, noting the vital contributions of the humanities to local, national, and global conversations. At the same time, systemic public problems have energized serial community discussions on campuses across and beyond the U.S.A. In the contexts of corporatized higher education and posthumanism, this essay suggests specific contributions rhetorical education can make in the service of human welfare and democratic life. We contribute a defense of rhetorical education by tracing its humanist foundations to revivify its promises for the global multiversity poised between campus and planet. We advance a posthumanist paideia, a rhetorical education that builds on the best of the humanist rhetorical tradition while including a plurality of historically distant and contemporary theories of rhetoric oriented toward feminist, antiracist, and posthumanist perspectives on citizenship, civic engagement, and “the public.” We advance a posthumanist paideia that takes campus public problems seriously and equips students with the collaborative habits and ethical communication practices necessary to respond to the calls of posthumanist democratic life. Our posthumanist paideia fosters the collaborative habits and practices of posthumanist public scholarship.