Composition in the Dromosphere

Speed is one way to distinguish how we approach rhetorical situations within and outside of the academy. Texts and arguments move quickly in any rhetorical situation, and rhetoric and composition has begun to theorize ways to make sense of these speedy situations. Drawing on Paul Virilio's discussion of the dromosphere, our contemporary environment of speed, this essay continues that work by examining the work of two DJs: DJ Spooky and Girl Talk. The compositional methods of DJs have received a great deal of attention in computers and composition scholarship, and much of that work has focused on how DJs can help us rethink intellectual property. This essay examines DJs for a different purpose, in order to examine two approaches to the difficulties of speed: scholê and dromos. I discuss DJ Spooky's remix of the film The Birth of a Nation, and I apply Girl Talk's methods to provide my own mashup of that same film. This essay argues that the mashup, in all of its various forms, is a particularly useful example of dromological writing, writing that is attuned to the problem of speed.