1. Reflecting on the Rhetoric of Technological Risk William J. Kinsella Department of Communication and Interdisciplinary Program: Science, Technology & Society North Carolina State University wjkinsel@ncsu.edu Comments at NIRT Workshop 29 August 2008 wjkinsel@ncsu.edu

2. Ulrich Beck on Risk, Reflexivity, and Reflection Self-induced societal risk (reflexivity 1 ) Risk distribution now joins resource distribution “Distributive risk justice now joins distributive justice” Need for systematic, foundational, and (partially) institutionalized reflection (reflexivity 2 )

3. Rhetoric, not “mere rhetoric” Rhetoric is pervasive Rhetoric is epistemic Rhetoric is constitutive Rhetoric and risk -- enabling/constraining -- terministic screen (Burke) -- attenuation and spectacle Rhetoric and democracy (Quintillian: “good man speaking well”)

4. Disclaimer (“Let me be clear…”) It’s not my intention to: Question motives, intelligence, or honesty of nano community Preach or educate Cry apocalypse Be a token critic (at 5 PM, Friday, on eve of Labor Day weekend) Be a naïve Luddite Deny technology, technological progress, value of new technologies Rain on the parade

5. Nevertheless… Sense of “train has left the station” Get on board or be left behind (commerce, capital, public, policy, academia) Technological inevitability (“technically sweet,” “resistance is futile”) Unreflective sense of “progress” (Burke: “god- term” and entlechy -- “rotten with perfection”) I do understand, we’re trying to do better Responsibility to try harder and in more diverse ways

6. Nuclear Analogy “100 Years of Nuclear Discourse” Mystery (mystification, demysification) Potency (material, economic) Secrecy (security, proprietary knowledge) Entelechy (teleology) “Nuclear Legacies” Responsibility and alibi Material legacies Discursive-democratic legacies Systems, Experts and Agency (Arney) EU 2008 White Paper on “Collective Responsibility”

7. Rhetoric(s) of Technological Risk The rationalist tradition has been broadly accused of not seeing what it does not see” (Luhmann, 1993, p. 14) “The limits of my language are the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein) Example: seismic risk at Hanford vitrification plant -- originally neglected seismic risks -- seismic study c. 2004 -- cost now doubled since 2003 to $12.3B; startup delayed from 2011 to 2019 (that’s the good news) -- still ignoring dam breach risk (to best of my knowledge)

8. What Don’t we See (Or What Can’t We Say)? Embedded Premises Individual cognition (attitudes, values, agency) vs. systemic incorporation Unitary “public” vs. multiplicity of publics (or “counterpublics”) Deliberative democracy (Dryzek, Habermas) vs. power, globalization, “standing reserve”

9. What Don’t we See (Or What Can’t We Say)? More Embedded Premises Calculability (“best science”) vs. “bounded rationality” Consensus (sociology of regulation) vs. sociology of conflict Hermeneutics of trust (system & selves) vs. hermeneutics of suspicion (Gadamer)

10. What Can (or Should) We Do? Institutionalize reflection Institutionalize uninstitutionalized reflection (honor non-mainstream voices) Imagine the (problematic) possibilities (role for science, art, literature, performance, dissent) Precaution as progress Building a rhetoric of reflection