-
Orator-Machine: Autonomist Marxism and William D. “Big Bill” Haywood’s Cooper Union Address
- Philosophy & Rhetoric
- Penn State University Press
- Volume 45, Number 4, 2012
- pp. 429-451
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Oratorical practice may be viewed as the material enactment of a philosophy of class struggle. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I propose “orator-machine” as a concept-term to describe speech making in the context of the open exterior of interconnected human and nonhuman machinic assemblages in capitalist modernity. My argument is based on a reconsideration of a single address, delivered by William D. “Big Bill” Haywood in 1911 at the Cooper Union in New York City. Reading Haywood against the grain—as a conceptual innovator—allows me to demonstrate a mode of analysis that affirms the philosophical quality and ontological politics of oratorical performance.