Call for Papers -- Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters -- online conference -- open to regional, national, and international presenters -- from Michigan, the Great Lakes Region of North America, and/or from around the world.

Abstracts due by 23 January 2026. Online conference is Friday, 27 March 2026 (time slots 8:00 - 17:00 Eastern Time Zone).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rTSa9xL-ng89BNvroUGY8tDeUsx-QG6f/view?usp=sharing

by Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter (forthcoming Routledge April 2026)

"Combining a rhetorical approach to the study of memes with profound philosophical concepts about information as a fundamental building block of existence, Information Rhetorics presents a framework for understanding the world through the lens of information transfer.

Drawing from rhetorical theory, semiotics, philosophy of information, and communications studies, the author explores how information - defined not as static facts but as transmitted significance and value - flows through both animate and inanimate realms. He examines how specialised terminologies function across disciplines while connecting to vernacular understandings of information transfer. By positioning memes as a heuristic tool, the author creates an interdisciplinary framework that illuminates economics, spirituality, and social theory.

This book will interest scholars, students, and researchers across disciplines, particularly those working in philosophy of information, rhetoric, semiotics, cultural studies and communication studies."

https://www.routledge.com/Information-Rhetorics-Memetics-and-the-Dream-of-Reverse-Engineering-Nature--Culture/Bennett-Carpenter/p/book/9781041194149

www.amazon.com/gp/product/1041194145/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

Out now: L.A. (SO) THE STORY GOES (2025 | various artists | Inglés)

"L.A. (SO) the Story Goes reúne a quince artistas con sede en Los Ángeles y los empareja con escritores internacionales en ensayos que exploran la narrativa como método artístico transformador. A través de instalaciones, performances, vídeos y textos, los artistas abordan temas como la identidad, la memoria y el mito, desafiando las definiciones rígidas y abrazando la fluidez. La antología, comisariada por Prospect Art, destaca cómo las narrativas personales evolucionan hasta convertirse en resonancia colectiva. Las obras presentadas abordan cuestiones como la migración, el trauma y las crisis ecológicas, creando un arte que redefine el sentido de pertenencia y traza un mapa de la impermanencia con profundidad emocional y visión crítica."

"L.A. (SO) the Story Goes gathers fifteen Los Angeles-based artists and pairs them with international writers in essays that explore storytelling as a transformative artistic method. Through installations, performances, video, and text, the artists navigate themes of identity, memory, and myth, challenging rigid definitions and embracing fluidity. Curated by Prospect Art, the anthology highlights how personal narratives evolve into collective resonance. The featured works confront issues like migration, trauma, and ecological crises, creating art that redefines belonging and maps impermanence with emotional depth and critical insight."

Ensayo | Investigación | Política
Coedición con Prospect Arts
2025
Primera edición
12.5 cm x 19.5 cm
152 pp.
Inglés
Impreso en risografía

18 USD

https://www.gatonegro.ninja/archivo
​

'In a phenomenology of memetica, we have the experience of it and the “appearance(s)” of it / “presentation” of it.
 
We have memetica as a lived experience and memetica as an abstraction: as an object of observation, analysis/interpretation, evaluation, and “position” and/or decision/direction-making.

-Fragments of Memetica, No. ​35.  [20210213]

'LOCAL MEMETICA: THREE INSTANCES OF GENIUS LOCI
Abstract/proposal accepted for the 48th Semiotic Society of America annual conference
Toronto, Canada, 30 October – 03 November 2024

Abstract:  “Memetica” is an ongoing project that seeks to expand the concept of semiosphere to include
not only the living, bio-psycho-social world but also the non-living, physico-spatio-temporal world,
including the geographical.  Memetica capitalizes upon the popular rhetoric of memes as a way into the
more profound discussion of information and semiotics, advancing the idea that signification constitutes
the very fabric of our social and natural existence.  Such signification is not primarily abstract but, rather,
is particular to localized instances: specific places within demarcated time frames.  In this
paper/presentation, I discuss three exemplar instances of dynamic local semiotics.  These exemplars
include Niagara’s whirlpool (water); Handwoven Drawings at Detroit’s Matéria (artwork); and a Buffalo,
New York, to Las Vegas relocation (conceptual mapping).  All with origins in the Great Lakes and
proximity to Toronto, these particular cases are where I most dramatically witness the ancient genius loci
at play here and now.

Keywords: memetica; information; semiotics; nature; artwork; geography'

Aristotle's humble gym, Athens (August, 2023)

'We are part of the “world” of memetica, but we are also set over “against” it or “correlated” to it.
 
This makes for a weird experience of being caught up within “in it” and even being very much “of it” but also coming to awareness of these facts and thus creating some intellectual, emotional, and existential distance from them.'

-Fragments of Memetica, No. ​34.  [20210213]

'There’s the entire ecology of “it all”.
 
Then there’s the entire “ecology of it all” for you and me – humans, communities, cohorts, various groups – and then also individually:
 
-“it all” for you
 
-“it all” for me
​
And then there’s “snapshots”, cases, or examples from within the ecology – a part of the whole that also is the whole, in part.  Keeping in mind different ways that parts may relate to wholes – especially in either reductionist terms or complexity terms:
 
-a part as a piece, or
 
-a part as a constituent participant of the whole (cf. Sokolowski; K. Burke).'

-Fragments of Memetica,  No. 33.  [20210207]

'Phenomenology can be complementary and in synch with evolutionary cognitive science in, to begin with, accepting that the very structures and processes of our perception and cognition are already part of the universe/world we humans attempt to objectify. 

On the one hand, there has to be a certain resignation to the limits of our cognition in fathoming what is “other” than us.  On the other hand, methods and tools of science can catapult us above our baseline cognitive (and physical) capacities.  Not to mention A.I.
 
“Constitutive” and “other”.'

-Fragments of Memetica, 32., pt 2.  [20210130]

'When talking about memetica or the rhetoric of “information” it can be challenging to sort out the entire issue of what’s “out there” and what’s “in here” – or what are we humans projecting (and to some extent constructing) on the world vs what is “really there”.  This is a classic can of worms that goes by many names and is a basic problem in philosophy – but, really, though we shouldn’t spend overly too much time on it because it is a false dichotomy and is not really an ultimate problem.
 
Here perhaps turning to some of the resources of phenomenology can help us through.  Our consciousness already is embedded in, constituted by, and connected with the world.  We are already a part of it.  “We’re swimming in it.”'

Fragments of Memetica, No. ​32, pt. 1.  [20210130]

'As people talk about a mind-body connection, especially because these two are not separate to begin with, one may also look to the connection between “memes” and materials, or the memetic and tangible goods – also because neither are these two separate to begin with.
 
One handle on all this is to begin to see the two “worlds” of the “mind” and “body” (or other comparable divisions such as “spirit” and “nature” or “culture”/”nature”) as being varying aspects of one “world.”'

-Fragments of Memetica, No. 31  [20210112]

'What are, historically, the material-semiotic “currencies” that had high value?  Those that would be sought from far and wide and transported to lands far and wide?
 
e.g. gold, silver, cochineal, cinnamon, tea, etc., etc., etc.
 
Insert a History of Goods here.
 
And some “goods” are ideas/images: this god or that god; a local spirit who becomes regional; a regional spirit who becomes trans-regional – and so on.'

Fragments of Memetica, No.  30  [20210112]

"'Value added' has come to be applied to every area of attention, not simply economics.  What’s the 'difference that makes a difference' (Bateson)? – the element that carries significance, meaning, or some version of effectual change so that it’s not only 'more of the same.'

Except that 'more' can also be 'better'  (And 'less' can be 'better'.)  That is, quantities have qualities.  Quantifications have qualitative aspects.  They aren’t just numbers or mere 'stuff' – there’s also the experience of those numbers or that stuff.
 
100 is a number.  What’s your experience of it?
 
How about 100 trillion?
 
How about 0.0000001?
 
QUAN & QUAL is a main axis to lay across or in front of the phenomenon or phenomena of memetica."

-Fragments of Memetica, No. 29.  [20210111]

'A 100% realistic map of the Mississippi, the Amazon, or the Nile would be 100% as long as the Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile!
 
Mapping like this has me thinking of the large wrapping projects of Christo & Jeanne Claude such as the wrapping of the Reichstag or the islands off the Florida coast.

[https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/surrounded-islands/]
 
Then I think how one dot can represent a city of 10 million or 30 million people:  here’s Lima:  ·  .  Here’s Mexico City:  ·  .  Impossible and yet so easy.  We all get it.
 
Here on this poster of the Milky Way Galaxy, this dot is where you and I are – the entire universe represented by one dot:  you are here:  ·  '

-Fragments of Memetica, No. 27, pt. 2  [20210109]

'To talk about memetica is already to simplify and, one could even say, skew reality in a certain sense.  But it is also to clarify reality.  If you glance at a map, you are definitely not looking at reality, but you likely are gaining a more useful vantage point on reality.
 
As it often has been said (e.g. Borges), a map that 100% matches reality would be absolutely ridiculous: it would be as big as the land it was mapping.  It would be a 1 for 1 correspondence to the actual geography.  So a map like this of South Dakota or New Brunswick would be the same size as South Dakota or New Brunswick!'

Fragments of Memetica, No. ​27, pt. 1  [20210109]

"I’ll sort of come in and out of immersion with this ‘ecology’.  How do you describe something you are within?  Meanwhile I – I think all of us – also are ‘outside’ it.  Call it a paradox if you want to, but I may think of it as a ‘dialectic’.
 
A dialectical approach to memetica in some senses of being is ‘in it, but not of it’, except that we are ‘of it’, too, but somehow we can be ‘out of it’, i.e., outside it.
 
Both mystical and practical.
 
A ‘cloud of unknowing’ with some knowing in the cloud."

-Fragments of Memetica, No. 26  [20201230]

"Begin, for example, at a most basic level by asking
 
What if we looked at religion in terms of ‘information’?
What if we looked at economics in terms of ‘information’?
What if we looked at politics in terms of ‘information’?
 
But what does ‘information’ mean?
 
Briefly, it is ‘the difference which makes a difference’ (Bateson).
 
Anything that ‘adds value’ to a given situation.
 
              a gene – adds value
              a word – adds value (possibly, to silence)
              silence – ‘adds value’ in a context of words."

Fragments of Memetica, No. 25  [20201230]

"To talk about memetica is a shorthand way to talk about rhetorics of ‘information’ as they operate across studies of nature and humanity.
 
Does using this lingo of memetica get us anywhere?
 
It could bring to light many areas of existence that would be misunderstood or just missed otherwise.  For example, it could shed light on religion, economics, and politics, just to name a few areas."

-Fragments of Memetica, No. ​24  [20201230]