The Empire of outrage: Topical systems at the death of Cecil the lion

ABSTRACT

This article employs the topographical metaphors of terrain and territory to examine how, upon the 2015 death of Cecil the lion at the hands of the dentist Walter Palmer, outrage was channeled into and captured by digital topoi. Digital rhetoric is organized into a topical system that is topographical, composed of not just “places” but “levels” that organize and orient rhetorical expressions into particular topoi. Users “navigate” and “move” through the channels of the digital topical system, and in the process arrive at or pass by topoi. I further argue that the digital topical system is composed of the terrain of digital spaces and the territory of global capitalism. The terrain of digital spaces shapes digital rhetoric through material affordances, cultural conventions, and the power of institutional logics. Digital rhetoric is further shaped by the macro-level territorial accretions of political and economic power in Empire. By mapping the topoi present in the case of Cecil the lion’s death, I show how scholars can better understand and articulate the ways that power ossifies into a digital topical system that shapes contemporary discourses.