Cooper.+Being+Linked+to+the+Matrix

=Cooper, Marilyn M. "Being Linked to the Matrix / Biology, Technology, and Writing."= //Rhetorics and Technologies / New Directions in Writing and Communication//. Ed. Stuart A. Selber. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 2010. 15-32. Print.

Abstract
No abstract.

**Argument**
Cooper’s expansive “Being Linked to the Matrix” integrates complexity theory, anthropology, neuroscience, new media theory, Marxism, post-structuralism, phenomenology, visual rhetoric, and post-humanism. Her ecological framing of writing challenges Rhetoric and Composition’s tradition of treating environments as mere static backdrops against which dynamic human action takes place. Drawing on Latour’s articulation of the actant, Cooper argues that we should conceptualize environments, tools, and humans as equally issuing imperatives, imposing boundaries, introducing opportunities, and responding to other actants. Accordingly, Cooper stresses how words, whether analog or digital, are not tools controlled by autonomous human agents; she writes “neither language nor technology is foreign to our nature; tools and words are us, not things we create and use” (18). Furthermore, she pushes Rhetoric and Composition to recognize how proximity to particular tools frames human perspective and conditions our notions of agency.

**Key Passages**
Cooper distinguishes her project from the New London Group and from Deleuze and Guarttari:

"My approach to writing differs from theirs primarily in my emphasis on writing as arising from responses to others and to social and physical environments, responses that involve both body and mind and are only partly and sometimes intentional" (17).

Selected Works Cited
Clark, Andy. //Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence//. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Latour, Bruno. //We Have Never Been Modern//. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.

Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco Varela. //The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding//. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1998.