The making of ka-knowledge: Digital aurality

This article asks that rhetoric and composition add to its concerns with visuality an interest in the role aurality plays in digital composing. Working initially with observations Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan made in the early 1960s regarding a new physics of sounding out, this article explores how hip-hop updates both theorists’ concerns with the contemporary notion of droppin’ science. Because droppin’ science suggests the displacement of knowledge production with ka-knowledge, new understandings of sounding out are needed in order to understand how ka-knowledge functions. The article works to map out and develop a theory of digital-based aurality called ka-knowledge.