Clemson University TigerPrints All Dissertations Dissertations 8-2014 Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies and Words Patricia Fancher Clemson University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at:https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations Part of theRhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Fancher, Patricia, "Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies and Words" (2014).All Dissertations. 1285. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/1285 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please [email protected]. 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. ii 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 iii 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. iv 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 v 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. vi 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 vii 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 viii 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 ix