![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
Abstract
As interests in material rhetoric continue to evolve among communication scholars, questions persist about how durability impacts the rhetorical dimensions of objects. To more fully understand how such objects participate in suasive activity during their lifetimes, I examine multiple aspects of material rhetoric in an encounter with the ruins of an abandoned Saturn dealership. By seeking ways to perceive how such a desolate place speaks and advancing a concept of ruin rhetoric that is sensitive to matters of time and durability, I argue that Saturn’s ruins assemble a rhetorical perspective of a distinctively “American” car company and its consumers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Since my original visit to the Saturn dealership in 2016, the site has been demolished and the lot bears little evidence that such a place ever existed. Therefore, I rely upon personal photographs I took during my exploration of the site, which I share throughout the essay. Photography continues to play a rather obvious though extremely important role in supplying a record of the (former) presence and material existence of ruins. As Kostof (Citation1995) writes, “buildings are often born of images and live on in images” and thus I view my own photographs and photographic practices as a means to accessing historical and rhetorical information.
2. For more on Burke’s new materialist lineage, see Graham (Citation2020).
3. For a self-proclaimed “furious” take on how this question might be answered in a previous generation, see Blake (Citation1964).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Saul Kutnicki
Saul Kutnicki is an independent scholar of Communication & Culture. He would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and thoughtful comments during the production of this essay. He would also like to thank Katherine Lind for her generous feedback on early drafts and Nicholas Webster for his invitation to Tallahassee. This work is dedicated to the memory of BB.