Anthropomorphic Machine of Rhetoric: Android Lincoln at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair

Abstract

In recent years, the fields of human sciences have witnessed growing interests in understanding the elusive nature of matters and the porous process of materialization. In response to the new intellectual trend that is often labeled “new materialism,” this paper critically argues that “Android Lincoln,” the prototype of audio-animatronics that Walt Disney invented in 1964, can be best understood as an “anthropomorphic machine of rhetoric”: it literally embodies a new materialist conception of human-speaking practice. Viewing the apparatus as a mechanical chimera that materializes humans’ technē of speech, this paper marks a first step toward a genealogy of the mechanical embodiment of rhetoric and promotes a theoretical reconfiguration of the relationship among rhetoric, materiality, and culture.