<b>Predictive Bodies: Rhetoric, Health, and Somatic Technologies</b>

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation is concerned with bodily rhetoric. I introduce neurobiological sensory concepts of interoception, exteroception, and proprioception to make up what I have named “the predictive body,” the central figure of this project. I use the notion of embodied prediction as the impetus for enriching a material rhetoric that does not only account for mental and social domains, but also of the body and its various sensory networks. I expand on other sensorial rhetorical scholarship by focusing on the unseen, unconscious senses of the internal body, namely interoception, a communication pathway between the brain and the body. From this I develop the concept of rhetorical interoception, a theory that brings into the fold the discursive, symbolic, material, sensorial, and bodily dimensions of rhetorical being. I analyze the predictive body in various clinical settings, namely body-informed therapies that leverage the affordances of somatic technologies to mediate bodily flux and help patients to draw deeper neurosomatic connections toward improved mental and bodily health. Drawing from various domains of neurobiological science, philosophy of the mind, and the humanities, I use rhetorical interoception to issue updates to major rhetorical concepts such as <i>techne</i>, affect, identification, <i>mētis</i>,<i> </i>and <i>entelechy</i>. In doing so I develop the predictive body as an object of rhetorical inquiry, demonstrating its utility in various areas of disciplinary scholarship including rhetorical theory, neurorhetoric, embodied rhetoric, and rhetoric of health and medicine.</p>