“Calibration” is the key word of S. Scott Graham’s The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical Ontological Inquiry. In this expansively
researched monograph published by The University of Chicago Press, Graham calibrates research in Rhetoric and Science & Technology Studies (STS) by demonstrating a methodology that readjusts both fields towards the center of a growing divide. Rhetorical-ontological inquiry challenges rhetoricians to pay more attention to material constraints and to take a systems-focused approach to objects of study.
Meanwhile, Graham challenges STS scholars of New Materialism to open themselves to the importance of discourse in shaping action, as well as to the rhetoricians’ toolkit of tropes, stasis theory, metaphor criticism, and more.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric