Table of Contents
20×20 Video – Mashups and Third Space
Waves of Third Space, Rhetorical Distance, and a Cacophony of Rhetors
Practice PhD Comp essay 1: A Triad for Utopia – Feminism, Third Space, and Rhetoric
Practice PhD Comp essay 2: The Evolution and Digitization of Rhetoric’s Memory Canon
Reflection Video
For my reflection essay, I decided to do it in video form to explain how I earned my “A” grade:
BTW, the video I’m talking over in my reflection video is a mashup video I created where I slowed down the video part of Killing Joke’s 1994 “Millennium” music video to 25% of normal speed while playing the music from the 1929 surrealist short file Un Chien Andalou. All it takes is some innovative manipulation of modern music videos in third space to create new surrealist short films!
20×20 Video – Mashups and Third Space
Twenty 20-second clips/images considering the world of mashups through the lens of third space.
(It’s “finished” as of 5 Dec 2023, but as with all my work, I still consider it just my latest draft containing most of my ideas. If it were printed out, it would be around 21 pages including the images/table. Hopefully, the graphics and tables I made add to the understanding of the ideas I’m proposing. Note that since this is webpage rather than a static page, I was able to include 2 videos.)
Waves of Third Space, Rhetorical Distance, and a Cacophony of Rhetors
Introduction
While it goes by many names, third space has always been with us, but it is modernity, with its emphasis on efficient use of time/places/humans/non-humans, that pushed third space into the background to ensure the primacy of our perpetual growth market mindset. Third space exists as a location free from hierarchies and constraining rules where humans can reflect, grow, craft their identities, and interact/perform with like-minded others. The notion of “other” is important as third space provides mediums/locations where others may congregate free from the constraints of work and home. In other words, third space is not a model of efficiency nor is it necessarily a site for profit production. Third space is where humans go, either physically or mentally or typically both, to be human. Centuries ago, villagers could flow from work to home to third spaces without a fixed schedule, so third space was most likely an integral part of life. Modernity changed that. We wake at home, prepare for work, commute, begin our work shift, work a fixed number of hours, commute back home, eat, prepare for the next day, and then sleep. This perpetual work cycle produces efficient workers, but it minimizes the time allotted for third space activities, especially for salaried workers who tend to make themselves available 24/7 and for so-called “gig workers” who work multiple jobs just to survive. Modernity and the quest for ever more efficient, available workers has minimized third space, which it sees as a waste of valuable time. Graphically, it looks like this where third space is a balloon uplifting humans that modernity would prefer to pop so that humans can get back to work on the factory floor.
Rather than revel in the varied rich cultures of the modern world, modernity would most likely prefer a homogenous, uniculture of workers with just enough education and resources to function as needed who would die quickly when no longer productive. This uniculture is the “melting pot” of assimilation where identities and their inefficiencies just get in the way of production and profit so they’re slowly eliminated most notably by the elimination of readily accessible third spaces, especially in the sprawling wasteland of suburbia. This tension between the human need to occupy third spaces in pursuit of their own humanity and the modernity goal of minimizing third spaces and their use has resulted in a plethora of scholarship in the past quarter century that has expanded the notion of third space in new and interesting ways. The goal of this essay is my attempt to makes sense of some of this third space scholarship through my interdisciplinary technical/cultural studies/rhetoric lens where I’ll introduce the notions of “waves of third space,” rhetorical distance, and the cacophony of rhetors while also addressing the goals of third space rhetoric.
Waves of Third Space
Much like rhetoric has expanded and evolved significantly since it was first defined, so too has the term “third space.” For centuries, rhetoric was a purely human activity mostly associated with an orator delivering a speech to an audience to convince them to take some course of action – a human persuading other humans. Over the past few decades, rhetoric scholars have introduced rhetors from the other-than-human world. Bruno Latour introduces the notion of ‘non-humans’ speaking to us humans in his Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies book, and Thomas Rickert goes even further in his ‘ambient rhetoric’ concept where he claims that even “the camouflage of a harmless butterfly that mimics a dangerous or poisonous lifeform is rhetorical” (418). What Rickert is proposing is that: 1) rhetoric is also a completely non-human activity, and 2) rhetoric can happen without the intentional action of a rhetor. Rhetoric has gone from an active, human activity to a passive, non-human activity – the only element still linking the two is the response of an audience to the persuasion of the rhetor. Has the definition of rhetoric expanded too much? There is a danger here Wayne Booth highlights when he states that “defining any term [like rhetoric] so broadly risks making it seem useless” (xii). What has happened to rhetoric is what tends to happen when scholars glom onto a concept – it’s a ball of cognitive Silly Putty that’s squashed, stretched, and twisted as inspiration to evoke new ideas that will (hopefully) result in humans building a better world for all humans and non-humans. This same process has happened with the concept of third space, but the pace has been greatly accelerated. Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist, introduced the concept of third place in sociological terms as physical locations that were neither work (first place) nor home (second place). Here he defines the term “third place” in 1999 for the first time:
For Oldenburg, the third place is a neutral location “for the cardinal and sustaining activity of third places everywhere…conversation” (26). Perhaps because of its low-stress atmosphere, “the third place is often more homelike than home,” so it could be considered a second, second place (Oldenburg, 39). Implicit in Oldenburg’s notion of third place is the idea that humans can be – and perform – who they are and discuss whatever topics they choose free from the constraining roles they must perform in both first place (work) and second place (home). How else could a third place feel “more homelike than home”?
From this 1999 “third place,” Homi Bhabha defines a closely related term he calls “third space” in his 2004 The Location of Culture book, but he makes no reference to either Ray Oldenburg or third place which are both disturbingly absent in his book. In defining his term, Bhabha states “that Third Space…constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized, and read anew” (55). What Bhabha seems to be saying is that Third Space is a location where the cultural constraints of work (Oldenburg’s first space) and home (Oldenburg’s second space) can be unshackled so that elements of culture can be “read anew.” The Third Space is a safe space where typically not-so-powerful humans create and wrestle with new ideas typically associated with their identity. Sherita Roundtree and Michael Shirzadian recognize the emphasis on power in Bhabha’s Third Space when stating that third space is “an in-between space where historically marginalized bodies and communities can articulate resistant politics through “the secret art of Invisible-Ness,” a phrase Bhabha borrows from poet Meiling Jin” (175). How are Bhabha’s conversations of third space related to Oldenburg’s conversations in third place? One way to look at it is that Bhabha’s conversations are one type of activity that can occur within Oldenburg’s third place. Graphically, it looks like this:
Why didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t Bhabha see the relationship of his third space work to Oldenburg’s third place work, especially when they sound so similar? Frankly, there’s no incentive for him to properly position his third space as a subset of someone else’s work, especially a sociologist who is outside his critical theorist discipline. Generally speaking, interdisciplinarity is embraced when it enhances and elevates theories, not when it positions a theory, such as Bhabha’s, in another discipline’s more grand theory.
While third place and third space sound familiar, it’s valuable to quantify and reflect on their use over time. Following is a Google Ngram for third place, third space, thirdplace, and thirdspace use between 1990 and 2019:
Since “third place” has such strong competition overtones, it’s not surprising that it dominates the others, but it is surprising that “third space” has been growing since the mid-1990s. Note that spellings without gaps (“thirdplace” and “thirdspace”) barely register. While it would be interesting to delve further into this use of third space prior to Bhabha’s, this is outside the scope of the present investigation. Suffice it to say that Bhabha missed yet another opportunity to position his use of the “third space” term.
Frankly, it’s easy to pick apart the work of other scholars, and, while it may feel good in the moment, it ultimately isn’t that productive. It’s better to take a more strategic approach to see how third space has evolved and became more complex over time. We can turn to feminism and employ its “wave” categories for use in third space scholarship as seen in the following table:
In Table 1, the waves are presented as increasing the complexity of the analysis of the topic at hand whether it is feminism, third space, or even the study of incompressible fluids, which I studied in my undergraduate engineering courses. In the study of fluids, there is no “rejection” of first or second waves, there is only a natural progression in complexity – this is how humans tend to learn. Similarly, in feminism, although there are powerful, racist reasons why it happened this way, there is an increase in complexity from white women publicly pursuing the right to vote, to white women questioning their public and private roles and identities, to – finally! – analyzing the roles and identities of ALL women, especially those marginalized for centuries.
I propose that we use the feminist wave approach for third space to understand its evolution and for pedagogical purposes. The first wave is Oldenburg’s definition of a neutral space for humans to be human followed by the second wave which Bhabha defined as an inward turn of humans to define their identities outside of work and home. Since the term “place” can be limiting, the arguably more generic term “space” now modifies “third.” The second waves of third space and feminism are similar in that both are questioning cultural identities imposed on humans from Oldenburg’s first and second places. The third wave of third space liberates humans from operating only in third place and identifies what Celia Whitchurch calls “Third Space Professionals” whose “roles may not fit neatly into existing organization or career structures” (Teichler and Cummings 80). Although Whitchurch is focusing on the “boundaries that are being breached” in faculty and administration zones within the first place of academia, her observation is applicable to first places in general and recognizes that third spaces exist both in humans and locations in first place (Teichler and Cummings 81). This is shown in the following figure where “TS” is a location of third space:
For the first wave of third space, the first place and third space were considered separate islands that humans physically traveled between. One typical first wave question was how to get third place sensibilities and complex thinking into first place. Extrapolating Whitchurch’s academic model to a generic first place, the third wave of third space suggests that third space has always existed in first place, but like any marginalized groups these “third space professionals” don’t get the recognition or rewards befitting their crucial role in first place. These third space professionals are effectively invisible and, as Bhabha puts it, they “circulate, without being seen” (55). Thus, in order to get to third wave third space, there are “invisibleness” elements of second wave third space that must be incorporated. Hopefully, this discussion of third space as a series of waves helps to clarify and complicate the notion of third space. In fact, using the graphic in Figure 4, we may even predict that the fourth wave of third space will involve the elements of first place, especially rules and hierarchies, that trickle down to third space suggesting that neither first place nor third space is as pure as they first seemed.
The Tyranny of ‘Third’
The previous discussion mixing and matching third place, third space, and third waves can get confusing. In fact, I had to reread my writing a few times to ensure I got it straight, but I can’t be certain. I can only imagine how difficult and confusing it can be for a reader. While it’s too late for this generation of scholars, perhaps the next generation will come up with a better term. Considering its importance to humans and their mental wellbeing, it’s a shame that this area of scholarship is labeled “third space” due to the negative connotations “third” evokes in scholars and casual readers alike. In competition, third place is nowhere near as impressive as first place, so “third” equates to not winning. Then there are the connotations associated with “third world” and its supposed lack of modern amenities and a lower standard of living (so says the first world). Third degree burns are the worst and can lead to death. From a linguistic standpoint, third person is by definition the language of the Other – he/she/it/they. The third person is not me or you, it’s somebody else. There just doesn’t seem to be any truly positive connotations associated with “third.” Then there is the confusion of scholars who want to play with third space but then feel obligated to define some arbitrary first and second spaces for completeness – this is what typically happens when the waves of third space aren’t understood and/or the third space becomes separated from its scholarly context. For example, Artur Filip, in his paper on sustainable practices in Jazdow, describes first space as “fixated on the ‘real’ material, physical form” (which resonates with Oldenburg’s physical third place), second space “is focused on the ‘imagined,’” and third space is a “possibilities machine” that “encompasses both approaches” (2). While there are certain elements in his definitions that could perhaps be seen as riffs off of the waves of third space, in general he seems to have refined third space to fit his scholarly needs and then created first and second space definitions to logically lead to his third space definition. This is the tragedy of ‘third’ – it not only has negative connotations, it can also lead scholars astray if the historical context isn’t understood. Third space should not be seen as a Rorschach test where anything goes. I only hope that future scholars, when they inevitably rediscover the essence of third space decades from now, give it a new name that won’t be so confusing. Scholars love to take an old idea, give it a little tweak, and rebrand it as their own, so I’m sure third space will rise anew long after we’re gone.
Third Space: Celebration, Sentence, or Something Else?
While the label “third space” may be a bit unfortunate, what are the implications for humans in third space? Is it source of celebration, a sentence to a life of misery, or is it something else? Or is it all of these? At the beginning of this essay, I presented third space as an uplifting balloon for humans that modernity sought to pop in Fig. 1. This would be the first wave definition of third space from Oldenburg’s third place when humans go to celebrate their human connections in a local pub or some other neutral community location. First wave third space is, more often than not, a source of celebration and an escape from the drudgery of first place and the duties of second place. While the second wave of third space can be a source of celebration due to the realization of one’s identity, too often it is Bhabha’s invisibleness of those in second wave third space that dooms them to a sentence of misery. These are the humans who don’t fit in the first place categories, those who aren’t seen either literally or figuratively. For example, in Tampa Bay there are working families who live in hotels – they aren’t quite homeless (even if technically they are), but they can’t afford the rents that escalated rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic, so they’re “trapped in housing purgatory” and are “casualties of a punishing Tampa Bay housing market, one of the hottest in the nation, where rent has spiked more than 35% in five years” (Peace). Families living in a motel room with minimal furniture, a profound lack of privacy, little storage, and often no kitchen results in a sentence of misery for those in this second wave third space, a fate common to the invisible. What then of those who operate in third wave third space? The example presented earlier was of Whitchurch’s “third space professional” who, unlike those in second wave third space, are operating in first place. While they may not get the recognition and rewards they deserve for their unique, multi-faceted talents, it’s typically neither a source of celebration nor a sentence, it’s something in between that can sometimes generate joy but also pain. Ultimately, the third space professional has options and can move to another job if the pain outweighs the joy. While those in second wave third space are profoundly invisible, those in third wave third space are at least partially visible even though some of their accomplishments are invisible. What this reflection on the emotional state of the those in third space shows is that all the waves of third space exist at all times in modern society. We just have to look for them.
Rhetorical Distance – The Missing Third Space Metric
To appreciate how the those in second wave third space are rendered invisible, I’ll investigate this using phenomenon using an element of rhetoric, namely the rhetor. Putting aside the latest fashions in rhetoric such as ambient rhetoric and the rhetoric of new materialism with their emphasis on non-humans, I’ll return to traditional rhetoric and its humans-persuading-humans model. The way this happens is through the exigence, constraints, and audience that Lloyd Bitzer described in his famous rhetorical situation allowing a human rhetor to produce rhetoric that “functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world” through the audience (3). Following is a simple sequential flow of an exigence that inspire the rhetor to create a constrained rhetorical text that is performed for an audience resulting in some action.
It’s the rhetor that multiplies its force via an audience inspired to action to produce change in the world. In the waves of third space model (Table 1), it’s only those in the third wave third space who operate in first place (Fig. 4) and have opportunities to make changes in the world. Those who are invisible in second wave third space are the exact opposite of active rhetors – they are passive objects, invisible and ignored. They are incapable of making any significant changes in the world, because they don’t have access to power. Between the active rhetor and the passive object is a subject that is acknowledged as human and is – at best – partially visible. What the subject has in common with the object is its inability to make significant, worldly changes. This is the exclusive domain of the rhetor. The key metric that differentiates rhetor from subject from object is its distance, its rhetorical distance, from the audience. Following is a graphical depiction of rhetorical distance:
In his famous essay, “The Thing,” Martin Heidegger makes a distinction between objects and things and proclaims that “things thing” (174). By this, he means things aren’t invisible, and the actions of things are noticed by an audience. Heidegger wasn’t talking about humans, but I am; however, we both classify objects as far from the audience, so “far” that objects and their actions become inconsequential and thus invisible. The rhetorical distance of “far” can be physical or cognitive or emotional or some combination of all three. There is a case where things can become rhetors, and that’s the main point of new materialism with its plea that humans shouldn’t simply be amused by “things thinging,” which costs nothing more than brief human attention, and elevate non-humans to the status of rhetors which can alter the behavior of humans. An example of this would be endangered African elephants who are on their way to extinction. Some humans in America see these African elephants as mere objects – the rhetorical distance is huge both physically and cognitively. A digital article on their dire situation wouldn’t even garner a click. Objects are irrelevant to humans in power, and the overwhelming majority of humans and non-humans are just objects to them. The elephants do have the ability to become subjects, but there’s always something in it for the humans in power, whether it be money-making safari businesses like in the Great Limpopo Conservation Area or zoos where the elephants are subjects where their actions are noticed (Hughes). They are no longer the passive objects they once were – they are now active subjects, but they aren’t causing significant changes to the world. Their extinction process continues due to human activity, which takes precedence for humans in power. New materialism would want humans to elevate African elephants to the status of rhetors, where humans in power would become the audience in traditional rhetoric and make changes in the world to reverse the extinction trends and restore the habitat of African elephants. A tall order considering the transactional behavior of humans in power who would see this as an infringement on their profit potential.
While considering the plight of African elephants provides a good example of rhetorical distance, it’s how humans in power consider other humans (typically with little power) that shows the utility of rhetorical distance. The formerly enslaved in America is an excellent case study. At the founding of America, African Americans were enslaved and treated as property. Children were ripped away from their parents and sold to the highest bidders. To those humans in power, African Americans were passive objects, to put it mildly, whose routine actions as profit-generating non-humans weren’t worthy of attention – if their actions did matter, then something was wrong. During the civil rights era in the 1960s, African Americans were granted rights and their lives now started to matter – they became subjects since humans in power were now paying attention to their actions since they could now vote and alter power, at least politically. African Americans were on their way to becoming rhetors who could make significant changes in the world. And become rhetors they did! The ultimate example of this was the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States to become the rhetor who has the most power in the world. However, the collapse of the rhetorical distance between some humans in power and a powerful African American rhetor has led to an irrational backlash that seeks to return African Americans to the status of subjects and even objects. Until they evolved to become rhetors, the actions of African Americans were often seen in terms of entertainment value by humans in power. “Shut up and dribble!” is a recent retort of those humans in power to those who dare attempt to transition from entertaining subjects to acting rhetors seeking to create a more equitable world.
The most disturbing and obscene response is from those who seek to return African Americans to their pre-civil-rights status as mere objects. In recent months, humans in power have sought to make African Americans invisible (in the Bhabha sense) again by banning books related to African Americans, eliminating high school advanced placement classes dealing with African American history, purging DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs, gerrymandering to pack and crack African American voting districts, purging voter rolls, restricting African Americans ability to vote, and using the legal system as a weapon to question the validity of their votes. Without the ability to document/tell their histories and to vote, the humans in power are seeking to purge African American “constrained rhetorical texts” from American society and degrade the rhetorical performance of voting so it become irrelevant. These two actions would eliminate two elements of the rhetorical process in Fig. 5 rendering African Americans no longer effective rhetors. They would no longer be “near” in the rhetorical distance sense as seen in Fig. 6. At best, they would be subjects, but it’s clear that some human in power want African Americans to become objects that are “far” from them in the rhetorical distance sense – they want to push them as far away from them as they possibly can. From a third space perspective, what they want is to take those who enter first space with a third space mentality (indicated here by an appreciation for those marginalized) and ethnically cleanse (both physically and cognitively) first place so that it devolves from the “third wave of third space” to the “first wave of third space” depicted in Fig. 4.
What this example demonstrates is that the process of evolving from object to subject to rhetor is not a simple one-way street. There will be pushback from those humans in power who see new rhetors as threats. If the transition of humans or non-humans from object to rhetor doesn’t benefit those humans in power, they will generally seek to reverse any progress. It’s happening now and can be summed up as “Make African Americans Objects Again.” But the most horrific example of rhetorical distance happens during war. In this case, the human “enemy” is stripped of all opportunity to become a rhetor or even a subject and is intentionally kept as rhetorically far from the audience (typically the public) as possible. The enemy must become an object so that whatever fate (shooting, stabbing, bombing, atomic attack) befalls “it” (typically civilian non-combatants) is justified – there is no option for the enemy to become human. The tragic irony is that after the war, the previous “enemy” becomes human again and the rhetorical distance is greatly reduced. One definition of humanity is to minimize rhetorical distance and allow the opportunity for all humans and non-humans to become rhetors.
A Cacophony of Rhetors
If a group of crows is a “murder,” what is a group of rhetors called? I couldn’t find a word for it, so I’m going to call it a “cacophony.” I hope it catches on. It makes sense especially in the modern digital age where there is an endless cacophony of rhetors vying for every human’s attention. The simple act of turning on a cell phone greets its user with a grid of icons speckled with attention-grabbing red dots encircling a number quantifying the cacophony of new rhetors awaiting interaction. Each interaction a potential delicious dopamine hit to feed our addiction. Clicking on a link often opens up a webpage filled with another cacophony of rhetors vying for attention, where generative artificial intelligence often creates elongated filler text providing ever more opportunities for dynamic media to demand we buy some product we don’t need. Trying to calm the cacophony by closing advertising media not only diverts our attention to the ad (a win for them), but those tiny “x” icons more often than not send the user to the advertising webpage. Most users simply scroll, trying their best to ignore the ads, until they get the little dopamine hit of information at the bottom of the column of that could have been explained in the first paragraph. Tim Wu succinctly explains the economic motivation for this cacophony of rhetors from an historical perspective: “Since the rise of capitalism, it has been known that capturing someone’s attention could cause him to part with some money” (9). The objective is to grab and hold attention for as long as possible while feeding spectators a steady stream of advertisements just like the “penny papers” did in the 19th century (Wu 12).
This cacophony of rhetors is a supreme challenge to third space rhetors, even those who, like in Fig. 4, are functioning in first place. How do you break through and get either your “constrained rhetoric text” and/or “rhetorical performance” in front of your desired audience (Fig. 5)? And even if you break through, how do you hold the attention of your desired audience so they will thoughtfully consider your rhetorical plea when the cacophony of other rhetors continues roaring? How do you know if your first place audience even has the capacity to consider your rhetorical plea? To have this capacity, each member of the audience must be able to practice what Jean Nienkamp calls “internal rhetoric” which involved a “rhetorical self” which is composed of a “colloquy of internalized social languages” (127). While just talking to yourself is what would naturally be assumed with a term like internal rhetoric, Nienkamp refers to this conscious self speech as “cultivated internal rhetoric” (125). It’s somewhat implied that there is some of this internal rhetoric going on before each member of the audience in Fig. 5 decides to take (or not) the rhetor’s desired action. Indeed, the ultimate third spaces may be the individual minds of each audience member where Bitzer’s constraints on the internal rhetorical situation can be few, and Oldenburg’s third space “conversations” become Nienkamp’s “internal rhetoric.” One possible outcome of the cacophony of rhetors in the virtual world (and the analog world) is that the noise becomes overwhelming resulting in a frozen, confused audience of individuals with neither the time nor the energy to make sense of the multitude of rhetorical streams bombarding them. They may feel compelled to make a decision and then choose to react to a loud, charismatic – but wrong – rhetor who cuts through the noise proposing simple answers that don’t require little to no mental energy. This is how first place authoritarians rise to power. Third space sensibilities with their concomitant requirement for thoughtful contemplation have no chance to break through in this situation and garner an appropriate level of attention. One possible solution is for academia to provide the tools and training to help students sift through the eternal cacophony of rhetors, identify what is important for humans and non-humans, and apply the requisite amount of energy and thought to craft useful solutions.
Back to the Third Space Future
During one of our first classes, we were asked to ponder whether third space was anything new. The answer is yes and no. In the humanities, I think it’s up to each generation to wrestle with repeating questions/ideas that have bedeviled humanity and don’t seem to have a final, fixed answer. For instance, centuries earlier, the notion of the “Renaissance Man” was all the rage with its notion that an educated human (back then it was always a man) should know math and science as well the humanities to be a productive member of society. Today, we’ve resurrected that sensibility and refer to it by the acronym STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) as the goal for well-rounded, interdisciplinary students. Whitchurch is also riffing off the Renaissance Man concept with her idea of a Third Space Professional, who has interdisciplinary skills applicable to situations in first place where disciplines overlap, and a translator/facilitator is required to get the job done. So, is third space entirely new? Not necessarily, but it does integrate a physical location (Oldenburg’s third place) which wasn’t part of the Renaissance Man concept. Ultimately, I see “third space” as what Sara Ahmed calls a “happy object” where affective communities “share feelings because we share the same object of feelings” (56). We, as a community of scholars, have settled on a term/concept for this generation – “third space” – and this term is an “object of feelings” which provides us joy/excitement to use as I witnessed numerous times during our classes. It may seem odd to define a community of scholars as an “affective community,” but each community of scholars tends to have the same affective responses to certain ideas – it’s part of what binds them together no matter how rigorous and/or scientific the discipline. Most often, humans need to slap a new label to an old idea to drag from the archive into the present, tweak it, and make it applicable to the new circumstances/rhetorical situations. Third space is the same as it ever was, and certainly another generation will drag “third space” into their present, rename it, tweak it, and make it applicable to them just as we did to “Renaissance Man.” One of my fellow rhetoric PhD students had never heard the term “Renaissance Man” but is now well versed in “third space,” so I suspect future generations will know their new term for these ideas and may not know what “Renaissance Man” or “third space” means. Ultimately, we humans create Ahmed’s happy objects to help define us, and the illusion of pure newness is part of the process and the joy.
Goals of Third Space Rhetoric
Given this idea of third space, cynics are sure to ask, “so what?” and question the utility of third space to create a better world. Is third space just another academic plaything to keep the present generation of scholars occupied or does third space have some practical goal? If I had to pick a single goal of third space, I would say third space’s goal is to become an innovation generator. Any cursory review of LinkedIn or business journals will reveal the pursuit of innovation is a key goal of businesses with the phrase “Innovate or Die!” a common mantra. Innovation isn’t just for profit, it’s also essential to solve the problems plaguing humanity: climate change, extinctions, food insecurity, income inequality, etc. There are no easy answers to these, and we’ll need innovative solutions to solve them – this is where third space comes in. Third space, specifically “third wave third space” shown in Fig. 4, shows that individuals with a third space (read interdisciplinary) background will interact with first place individuals. This interaction can and will produce new ideas – innovations! – that first place individuals wouldn’t have created on their own. In biology, the interaction of different environments, say a forest and a savannah, produces what is called an “edge effect” where new organisms spawn producing biological innovation. In first place, there’s a comparable innovative spawning where third space professionals exist. There may be a tendency to pull all third spaces then into first place, but that would be misguided. Totally assimilating third spaces would destroy their unique attributes resulting in a monoculture of first place and a reduction in innovation potential. The key is for first place to accommodate third spaces to ensure their unique and creative perspectives are preserved and allow third space professionals to freely commute between first places and third spaces, both physically and mentally. This system will allow for maximum innovation, one of the most beneficial goals of third space for humans and non-humans.
Random Acts of Third Space (Interdisciplinarity)
If one of the most grand goals of third space is innovation at a strategic level, is there something that third space offers us at a more tactical, human level? Indeed, there is! Because it is effectively a safe space for the mashup of ideas and cultures, third space provides a sensibility of understanding and appreciating others and all facets of their intersectionality. The idea is to add a little third space sensibility to our lives through “random acts of third space” that expand our understanding of others, of new ideas, or new experiences. One random act of third space would be to learn something you’re not supposed to. We all live in cultures that, whether explicitly stated or not, tend to limit our appreciation for other knowledge. When I look back on my life, my pursuit of humanities and cultural studies at the graduate level after a career as a mechanical engineer was a random act of third space, since it was such a departure from what the engineer career field values. And my study of mashup music videos was another random act of third space since it was an investigation of something considered trivial and of questionable intellectual value. But it’s also possible to perform a random act of third space on a larger scale. Through my studies in this course, I’ve come to understand outdoor concerts as third spaces where folks from all walks of life interact without the hierarchies and structure of first place. One particular performance struck me as a random act of third space, and that was an interlude where Jelly Roll told a story about his teenage years and the country music influences from his mom, the rock music influences from his sister, and rap music influences from his brothers that he mashed up to produce his own innovative form of music. Here is that 10-minute interlude:
Though his storytelling, Jelly Roll effectively gives his audience permission to appreciate all types of music regardless of origin or genre. At the end of his interlude, Jelly Roll has his mostly white audience singing the rap of Biz Markie without any musical accompaniment, something they probably wouldn’t do outside the third space of a concert. Jelly Roll was not just performing third space, but he effectively evoked a third space response/performance from his audience that will hopefully stick with them once they leave the concert. The point here is whether you have an audience of one (yourself) or 17,000 (like Jelly Roll), you can engage in random acts of third space to make the world and the understanding of it better and more accepting for all humans and non-humans.
The Fragility of Third Space
While this essay has covered my understanding of and musing on many facets of third space, there is one topic that must be addressed before I conclude, and that’s the notion that third space and the products of third space are fragile. In Fig. 4, the first wave of third space is shown at two equally sized spheres, but nothing could be further from the truth. First place is where power typically resides and third space is where power typically isn’t. If these were shown to scale with respect to power, first place would be the sun and third place would be the earth, about 1% the diameter of the sun. This means that third spaces and third space personnel can be eliminated if first place folks make that decision. The worst case of this is genocide. Can first place completely eliminate third space? Probably not, but they can dramatically decrease its impact. Think of the book banning going on now and the further attempts to silence those who don’t fully embrace first place governance no matter how wretched. Often, these sweeping acts of third space purging aren’t enacted, and more targeted actions are taken to send a message to third space practitioners. For instance, DJ Cummerbund’s mashup music video entitled “The Devil Wapped Down to Georgia” which seamlessly blended The Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” with Carli B’s “WAP” was banned from DJ Cummerbund’s YouTube page. For reference, here’s the video:
In my personal discussions with DJ Cummerbund, I know that it can take weeks to get a mashup music video “just right” so that it seems like a smooth, continuous audio and visual experience; however, all it took was someone in first place to object to its existence to ensure it was removed from YouTube. All that work wasted. But the reality is that someone else in third space had a copy of it (as do I) and posted it back on YouTube where it fragilely existed. Unfortunately, I can’t find it anymore, so first place has probably cancelled it again. While the relationship between first place and third space can be beneficial for first place with the innovations it spawns, other acts of third space creativity may not impress first place resulting in purges. It’s not only the products of third space, like mashup music videos, that exist in a fragile state, it’s the third space personnel and the third spaces as well. Third space and all that goes with it cannot be taken for granted.
Conclusion
This essay has been nothing more than my musings on a variety of third space topics, from the relationship of modernity to third space, to the waves of third space, to the oddness and implications of the word “third,” to the fate of those in third space, to the relationship of rhetorical distance to third space, to the incessant cacophony of rhetors that third space must break through, to the conceptual roots of third space, to the goals of third space, to random acts of third space, and finally to the fragility of third space. Prior to this course, I had little understanding of third space – it was a new concept – but I have been inspired to wrestle with third space as a physical location, a mindset, and a concept to see its value for humans and non-humans. During this intellectual journey, I was surprised to see myself in our readings. There was one in particular that addressed the third space nature of academic advisors who also teach – they are both administration and faculty. I’m not only an academic advisor who also teaches, I’m also a student, so it seems I’ve hit the ultimate trifecta of being third space in academia. The lesson here is that I bet all humans have some third space in them and that they seek the solace of third space locations. At the beginning of this essay, I noted Booth’s warning about rhetoric trying to be everything which could lead it to become nothing and questioned whether this could be happening to third space. I can safely say that third space is in no such danger. In fact, we’re still wrestling with the notion of third space and are nowhere near exhausting its potential for scholarly pursuits, and I hope this essay has expanded our understanding and appreciation of the intersectionality of third space. From a meta standpoint, third space scholarship with its interdisciplinary imperative should be thought of as a third space amidst the well-policed disciplines of first place academia. We’ve only just begun to play with third space.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. Abingdon, Routledge, 2004.
Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 1-14.
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Rhetoric. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Filip, Artur Jerzy. “Jazdów: An Island of Real-and-Imagined Sustainability.” Urban Design International (London, England), 2023.
Heidegger, Martin. “The Thing.” Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row, 1971.
Hughes, David McDermott. “Third Nature: Making Space and Time in the Great Limpopo Conservation Area.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 20, no. 2, 2005, pp. 157–84.
Latour, Bruno. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard, 1999.
Nienkamp, Jean. Internal Rhetorics: Toward a History and Theory of Self-Persuasion. Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. Marlowe & Company, 1999.
Peace, Lauren. “Across Tampa Bay, families cram into motels to avoid life on the street.” Tampa Bay Times, 16 Nov 2023. https://www.tampabay.com/news/real-estate/2023/11/16/pinellas-motel-family-tampa-bay-housing-crisis/
Rickert, Thomas. “Preliminary Steps Towards a General Rhetoric.” The Routledge Handbook of Comparative World Rhetorics, edited by Keith Lloyd, Routledge, 2021, pp. 414-421.
Roundtree, Sherita V., and Michael Shirzadian. “Third Space: A Keyword Essay.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2020.
Teichler, Ulrich, and William K. Cummings. “The Rise of Third Space Professionals: Paradoxes and Dilemmas.” Forming, Recruiting and Managing the Academic Profession, vol. 14, Springer International Publishing AG, 2015, pp. 79–99.
Wu, Tim. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Knopf, 2016.
Practice PhD Comp Essay 1 – (Exam Rubric) Trace the definition of thirdspace paying close attention to its connection to both the study of rhetoric writ large and your own current/future work. For example, can you have a concept of thirdspace without feminism as an underlying theoretical frame? What then does that look like?
A Triad for Utopia – Feminism, Third Space, and Rhetoric
Well, it looks like I’ve run out of time to do a proper comp essay on this topic – it was bound to happen sooner or later in my graduate program – so I’ll toss up some thoughts on the topic that would have guided my writing.
To do this topic justice, there needs to be proper definitions of feminism, third space, and rhetoric – a tall order. I’d have to explicate each term, provide a bit of history showing the expanse of the possible definitions, and then settle on the definitions I’d use. For feminism, I’d focus on the primacy of equality for all humans and non-humans in creating a better world and how the equality aperture opened with each of the first three feminist waves.
For rhetoric, I’d use some of my previous work to make the case that rhetoric is a force that makes changes in the world as well as the gravity that holds culture together – it’s a simple definition that I find useful. Here’s a block of italicized text from some of my previous writing that makes that point: There’s no doubt George Kennedy knows what he’s talking about with respect to rhetoric, but his quizzical reflection on his life’s work and his quest for a general rhetoric in his 1992 “Hoot in the Dark” essay highlights for me a troubling aspect of rhetoric: ambiguity in its definition, theory, and application. This is where my interdisciplinary perspective rears its ugly head. Many may be quite comfortable with the variety of rhetoric definitions, but I want to find something clearer, more definitive like the definition of entropy, a concept that shares the same characteristic as rhetoric in that it’s fundamental to many disciplines. Kennedy does offer the concept of “rhetorical energy” and states that “Rhetorical assertion conveys energy and can spark reaction in another energy source” (3). While I like the physics-based language, my concern here is with the word “can” – I would replace it with “must.” For me, rhetoric must generate a response in another to qualify as rhetoric. Without a response, how is rhetoric different from any other communication? I’m then in agreement with Lloyd Bitzer when he states that rhetoric “functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world” (3). On the other hand, Kennedy suggests that anything, such as language, “physical actions, facial expressions, gestures, and signs” are rhetorical (4). I agree that these can be rhetorical, but there must be a significant (i.e., non-trivial) response of some sort to make them rhetorical. In this way, I’m closer to Wayne Booth’s definition of rhetoric as “the entire range of resources that human beings share for producing effects on one another” (xi). Blending Booth and Bitzer results in a definition of rhetoric that resonates with me: rhetoric produces effects on others that result in a change in the world. Where Kennedy’s rhetoric includes potential effects that may or may not manifest; Booth’s, Bitzer’s, and my rhetoric must have concrete effects. This is but one example of the ambiguity inherent in the discussion of rhetoric I’ve noticed.
With feminism and rhetoric given a working definition, I’d turn to third space and riff off of Oldenburg and Bhabha to define third place first as a location as I did early on this webpage. This would trace the definition of third space as I understand it: For Oldenburg, the third place is a neutral location “for the cardinal and sustaining activity of third places everywhere…conversation” (26). Perhaps because of its low-stress atmosphere, “the third place is often more homelike than home,” so it could be considered a second, second place (Oldenburg, 39). Implicit in Oldenburg’s notion of third place is the idea that humans can be – and perform – who they are and discuss whatever topics they choose free from the constraining roles they must perform in both first place (work) and second place (home). How else could a third place feel “more homelike than home”?
From this 1999 “third place,” Homi Bhabha defines a closely related term he calls “third space” in his 2004 The Location of Culture book, but he makes no reference to either Ray Oldenburg or third place which are both disturbingly absent in his book. In defining his term, Bhabha states “that Third Space…constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized, and read anew” (55). What Bhabha seems to be saying is that Third Space is a location where the cultural constraints of work (Oldenburg’s first space) and home (Oldenburg’s second space) can be unshackled so that elements of culture can be “read anew.” The Third Space is a safe space where typically not-so-powerful humans create and wrestle with new ideas typically associated with their identity.
I’d also expand third space to include an interdisciplinary character of humans using Whitchurch’s Third Space Professional concept: I propose that we use the feminist wave approach for third space to understand its evolution and for pedagogical purposes. The first wave is Oldenburg’s definition of a neutral space for humans to be human followed by the second wave which Bhabha defined as an inward turn of humans to define their identities outside of work and home. Since the term “place” can be limiting, the arguably more generic term “space” now modifies “third.” The second waves of third space and feminism are similar in that both are questioning cultural identities imposed on humans from Oldenburg’s first and second places. The third wave of third space liberates humans from operating only in third place and identifies what Celia Whitchurch calls “Third Space Professionals” whose “roles may not fit neatly into existing organization or career structures” (Teichler and Cummings 80). Although Whitchurch is focusing on the “boundaries that are being breached” in faculty and administration zones within the first place of academia, her observation is applicable to first places in general and recognizes that third spaces exist both in humans and locations in first place (Teichler and Cummings 81).
For the first wave of third space, the first place and third space were considered separate islands that humans physically traveled between. One typical first wave question was how to get third place sensibilities and complex thinking into first place. Extrapolating Whitchurch’s academic model to a generic first place, the third wave of third space suggests that third space has always existed in first place, but like any marginalized groups these “third space professionals” don’t get the recognition or rewards befitting their crucial role in first place. These third space professionals are effectively invisible and, as Bhabha puts it, they “circulate, without being seen” (55). Thus, in order to get to third wave third space, there are “invisibleness” elements of second wave third space that must be incorporated.
At this point, I’d make the obvious comparison of feminism’s intersectionality and third space’s interdisciplinarity – they’re both requesting that we see and appreciate the humans around us as more complex than we can imagine. We tend to easily see ourselves as complex, but not others. I’d then bring in my concept of rhetorical distance to explain why that’s so. It’s the rhetor that multiplies its force via an audience inspired to action to produce change in the world. In the waves of third space model (Table 1), it’s only those in the third wave third space who operate in first place (Fig. 4) and have opportunities to make changes in the world. Those who are invisible in second wave third space are the exact opposite of active rhetors – they are passive objects, invisible and ignored. They are incapable of making any significant changes in the world, because that don’t have access to power. Between the active rhetor and the passive object is a subject that is acknowledged as human and is – at best – partially visible. What the subject has in common with the object is its inability to make significant, worldly changes. This is the exclusive domain of the rhetor. The key metric that differentiates rhetor from subject from object is its distance, its rhetorical distance, from the audience. As with any Venn diagram, there is always a region of overlap and areas of isolation. I’d use this approach to state that the areas of overlap between feminism and third space, according to my definitions, are much greater than the areas of isolation considering how similar the concepts of interdisciplinary (third space) and intersectional (feminism) are. Finally, I’d mash all three concepts up (feminism, third space, and rhetoric) to create what I call a “triad for utopia” where feminism provides the exigence and moral compass, third space provides the location for conversation and contemplation, and rhetoric provides the tools to make changes in the world. All three are needed to create the better world for human and non-humans alike. I’d also explain what happens when only two of the three elements are in place to highlight why it’s crucial to have all three elements for effective change making. This would be my way showing what third space would look like without the underlying feminist frame – it would look like a car without an engine.
Yes, I’d include a “works cited” section and it would have at least 5 references.
Practice PhD Comp Essay 2 – (Exam Rubric) Cicero posited 5 canons of Classical Rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Choose one of these canons and trace its development over time. How does the contemporary understanding of the chosen canon compare to this body of research? Cite at least three scholars in your answer.
The Evolution and Digitization of Rhetoric’s Memory Canon
Well, it looks like I’ve run out of time to do a proper comp essay on this topic, too, so I’ll toss up some thoughts on the topic that would have guided my writing just like I did for the one above.
For this essay, I’d focus on the canon of memory and link its development over time with the evolution of technology and link it also to the concept of identity. In short, our memories define who we are and technology plays a pivotal role in not only our memories but in our identities. When talking about electronic media, especially television, McLuhan famously stated, “The Medium Is the Message” to which I’d say, “The Medium Is the Memory.”
Naturally, I’d start this essay out talking about the primacy of memory for the Greeks. In fact, they thought writing things down was cheating, and that any good rhetor would have everything memorized to ensure it could be instantly recalled at the kairotic moment. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that memory was a metric of a human for them. But it wasn’t just any old memories that mattered, it was scholarly memories. The printing press transformed the necessity of memory and put scholarly works in the hands of the public. There was still a premium placed on human memory for the educated, but it was becoming easier to carry around your memory. Of course weight limited the number of memories you could carry, but the transition to hybrid a techno-human memory system was established. A grand memory could be flaunted in the form of an exhaustive, but stationary personal library.
I’d then talk about the Penny Papers (referenced in Tim Wu’s book) in the early 1800s and the fragility and ethereal nature of newspapers which foreshadowed the fragile and ethereal nature of the internet. I’d then trace the transition of memory from analog to digital and the almost complete transition of human memory (for scholarly things) from the brain to the cell phone. To exploit the kairotic moment, humans now must have an internet connection.
I’d then discuss what this transition of memory from analog brain cells to digital archives means for humans and their identities. Given that we are all, either consciously or unconsciously, amassing and curating a personal digital archive, the question arises as to its psychological importance for the owner. After a review of research data, Sweeten et al. conclude “that people perceive their ‘self’ as extending to their digital possessions and become increasingly ‘attached’ to them” (54), and that these “virtual possessions have become an important part of the user’s extended self” (59). Given this inseparable link between our digital archive and self, it’s not surprising that Schull finds deleting personal digital data “risks self-dissolution” due to our “subjective identification with [our digital archive]” (44). The digital archive is evidently more than a mere collection of random data files: it’s psychologically part of us, and losing our digital data means losing part of ourselves. Consequently, in addition to the aggregation of cyberspace activity artifacts Parkinson et al. define as the “digitally extended self” (556), we must also add the personal digital archive thereby completing the totality of our perceived digital selves and giving credence to the definition of the cybershrine. Moreover, in describing personal digital data, Shull also speaks of “its promise of binary permanence”, making a clear allusion to the promise of immortality (47). In seeing immortality in one’s digital archive and projecting one’s self onto the archive, it thus follows that the existence of a personal digital archive provides a sense of symbolic immortality that alone, without the need for any TMT worldview or social consensus, provides psychological relief from existential terror. Recall that earning immorality via TMT requires not only embracing and demonstrating the tenets of a worldview in cyberspace to earn self-esteem but also defending it from constant clashes with other worldviews using primarily the denigration option as the assimilation, accommodation, and annihilation options are quite limited online. In comparison, the personal digital archive requires practically no work and grants immortality by just being there.
While it has been shown that simply possessing a digital archive provides a sense of immortality via Cave’s legacy narrative and that increasing one’s self-esteem by presenting and defending a worldview also provides a sense of immortality via TMT, there’s a question of whether simply having a presence in cyberspace (without the necessary TMT denigration fights over worldview) provides another element to our digital legacy that will assuage existential terror. To begin with, the “digital persona is an essential part of the individual identity” and “involves personal, social, institutional, legal, scientific and technological aspects” (de Kerckhove and de Almeida 278). In other words, it’s everything we do that leaves a trace in cyberspace, and everything we do does leave a trace. Crafting this “digital persona” is essential and the “moment when one participates in digital space, the identity is constructed, and the individual begins communicating” (Deh and Glodovic 105). In her discussion of cybernetics, Hayles states that we “do not see a world “out there” that exists apart from us” (11) which I think is an appropriate way to think of ourselves in cyberspace: we exist in cyberspace just like we do when we enter any other medium, like the ocean, with our physical bodies, except in cyberspace it’s a mental construct. And we experience cyberspace through the cybershrines we’ve created which are a perfectly preserved record of all our digital interactions (in addition to our digital archive) that is just as we left it when we logged off. Deh and Glodovic state that “identity is an experience of the essential consistency and continuity of the self in time and space” (102), and that’s exactly what a cybershrine provides. In discussing one’s digital life after physical death, Maciel and Pereira ponder what will become of one’s “digital legacy” in cyberspace (2), and its “immortality” that lives on in social media accounts (3). Whether intentionally or not, Maciel and Pereira are using the same terms TMT and Cave used to address existential terror. Thus, it is easy to conclude that one’s mere presence in cyberspace, an online digital legacy, provides a sense of immortality and consequently some relief from existential terror.
With this history and the importance of memory established, I’d conclude by comparing the ancient notion of memory as crucial to identity with the modern notion of memory as still crucial to identity, but we’ve outsourced our memory to technology and along with it parts of our identity. Many are worried that we’ll become hybrid biological-techno beings in the near future – the singularity Ray Kurzweil warned us about comes to mind – but an evaluation of memory with its roots in rhetoric shows us quite plainly that we’re already hybrids and we’re carrying around our memories and thus critical parts of our identities in our pockets.
Yes, I’d include a “works cited” section and it would have at least 5 references.
This page last updated on December 5, 2023