The syllabus asks, "We’ve had competing theories as to the epistemology of the visual. Qua Berger, it’s narrative; qua some authors in HH, it’s argument. What does seeing visuals as rhetorical add to the mix?" Now it might be that you see narrative and argument as overlapping. It might be that you'd like to add another epistemological paradigm into the mix. It might be that you'd like to focus on the role of emotion in knowing. At the end of the day, what does all this have to do with visual rhetoric?And why might I choose this image for this SRR?
I've struggled with the rhetoric portion of visual rhetoric because my inclination is to make rhetoric mean argument, so some of the images we've looked at thus far seem only aesthetic but I think I'm limiting the power and potential of visual rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteSo, if we think of rhetoric as using language to communicate effectively and persuasively, where persuasion isn't limited to argument but like Hill's suggests "to transform people" (37) then there is a wide range of visual elements that are rhetorical and that transformation can manifest in any number of ways.
Hill's discussion of the role of emotion is a valuable one, and I don't see how emotion could be excluded from visual rhetoric. Certainly visceral responses have their place, but the idea of "vivid information" gives us a way to rank the kinds of visuals we've looked at thus far and their degree of persuasiveness. I agree with Hills that there is a danger in a purely emotional response in that it can prevent further analysis and that is necessary at times to creating knowledge. With this image, for example, I think there is a requirement in educational setting especially to move beyond our emotional response and understand what is at work here and that this is owed to the men being horribly abused in these photographs because I think their shame and pain is furthered by the spread of these images.
This is certainly a disturbing photograph to look at even knowing that unfortunately torture is a reality of war as much as I disagree with it. It is impossible not to have an emotional response to this photograph. And I confess that other than being disgusted and disappointed and angry, I don't know that much about the event and just spent an unpleasant thirty minutes researching what happened. The rhetorical work of these photographs is concerning. Why were they taken? Why and how were they released? Why were new photographs released and then new photographs withheld from the public? Why has this photograph become so iconic?
I maintain a serious concern about the distribution of these photographs and I think that they require responsible use and compassionate deference to the obvious suffering they portray. The tools our theorists have given us--narrative, argument, the rhetorical situation, emotion, etc--are all part of the rhetorical work this photograph is performing and I posit that we need all of them to completely understand the Abu Ghraib torture photographs without being blindsided by a visceral response to this disrespect for human life.
I like that Leigh brought up Hill's notion of transformation because it gets at how I understand "visuals as rhetorical," and I also think it is compatible with the points that Blair is making. The most important of those (at least for the purposes of this blog post) is the vagueness of the image being analogous to the verbal enthymeme. The rhetoric of the visual (at least, it seems, according to Blair -- and I would agree) lies in the transaction between the viewer and the image in which the viewer is prompted to "fill in the blanks" of the message. By the very existence of that transaction, the viewer is transformed.
ReplyDeleteNow, I would argue that some images are more rhetorical than others, and that means to me that some images are more loaded with rhetorical intention than others. And, underneath that level of difference, some images are more rhetorically effective (i.e., initiate the desired transformation) than others.
On that point, I agree with Leigh when she says that the emotional has to be considered in any discussion of VR. The transformations that takes place at the occurrence of an image-viewer transaction is fundamentally emotional. From the first encounter, the initial response of the viewer is emotional. (Even with charts, graphs, etc.: haven't you ever opened up a science journal and been immediately bored by all the columns and rows and decimal points?) The intellectual can take over, but emotion makes the first stand.
While I'm not certain why the Abu Ghraib image was used, I do know that it seems to me to be working on the three levels mentioned in the prompt for this week. It is rhetorical because it causes the viewer to "fill in the blanks," even if that is an immediate emotional reaction, and it creates a transformation. It also urges the viewer to create a narrative to make sense of what is in the frame. Finally, one of the big arguments that this image was used to make was that the US military engages in torture.
Well, I guess I'm just a cynical old goat.
ReplyDeleteLike Stephen, I also found Blair’s discussion of the “visual enthymeme” to be especially interesting: “Visual arguers will answer these questions in creating their visual enthymemes, thus drawing the viewer to participate in completing the construction of the argument and so in its own persuasion”(59). Blair also ties free will into his definition of persuasion; persuasion only occurs, he claims, in situations in which “[t]he person consciously assents, and that implies that he or she is free to resist the causal influences”(43). However, although audience participation (we could even say collaborative effort) and the freedom to resist are present in the rhetorical situation and sounds very lovely (and they are all things I would heartily support),when the enthymeme already lays out the procession of the argument and it becomes only a matter of following the “manifest rationality” of that argumentative structure, then the picture painted is quite different. What I find so interesting about Blair’s piece is that these potentially positive aspects are in place but the rhetorical power of images almost always trumps them in negative ways (at least, for Blair): “[w]hat makes visual arguments distinctive is how much greater is their potential for rhetorical power than that of purely verbal arguments”(52). What I think this adds to the mix are issues of control and power (and thus, ethics and politics)—both on the side of the producer and the viewer. Whereas Berger is primarily concerned with the development of narrative in a kind of art world bubble, rhetoric adds a political element that, I think, is crucial. I love Berger but, in this way, Another Way of Telling seems like a rudimentary lesson in how images can generate narrative and/or a clever parlour game (I don’t entirely believe this, really just trying to stir up the pot; regardless,the absence of the political in Berger’s work really did strike me with this week’s readings).
So, using this image as much as possible, we can say that this image can operate as a metaphor for how visual rhetoric operates at its worst: in theory, the viewer can participate in argument (just like, in theory, “enemy combatants” have some right to legal defense or, at the very least, human rights) but the enthymeme attempts to close off objections. So, in a sense, the viewer is guided along by the image (or more accurately, the image producers) with an enthymemetic leash. Yes, images can “transform people” but, the problem (particularly with Blair) is that the boundaries of that transformation are tightly circumscribed and often serve the purposes of others (for both Hill and Blair, advertisers and producers of goods) (37). Since “selection” and the ability to choose (both as producer and participant/viewer) is important in my definition of rhetoric (“Reason is but choosing” says Milton), Blair’s piece in particular emphasized for me how necessary an ethics of choice is in visual rhetoric. Just like in a Victorian home, we are guided to restrict ourselves to an appropriate corridor.
And, speaking of choice, why did Dr. Yancey choose this image? In this context, it seems that she is asking us where this image might fit in with our definitions visual rhetoric. My first question would be: could this image be thought of as “rhetorical”? It doesn’t generate an argument we can articulate in the way Blair proposes. Is it persuasive? Yes, in the sense that it potentially affects beliefs, attitudes and conduct. These images forced many to revise how they viewed the war and the U.S.’s role in it—including those who had the power to transform military practices.
Also, I’m reminded of Sontag’s insistence that continual exposure to such images anesthetise viewers. If this is the case (and I’m not entirely convinced that it is), my next questions would be: as the immediate occasion and the circumstances behind this image fade into history, do the “visual properties of a visual argument” dissipate?
The visual. Such a trick to wrangle with. I am leery of the suggestion that a rhetorical image is one that makes an argument. Here is a piece of my thinking on this: What if implicit to an image is the desire for the viewer to share in an understanding of the scene that is reflected in the image? For the sake of illustration, what if implicit to the creation of an image was the argument, “come, stand here, and look at that couch through the lens of this camera, see it like this.” (here, I’m thinking about Burke) Visually rhetorical images do more, I think we’d agree, than make this argument. Otherwise, anything could be visual rhetoric. As I began to think through the division between this & narrative and what rhetoricity, I was struck by the juxtaposition between the linked home décor images and the Abu Ghraib image that precede this comment on the blog. What does this striking, if not somewhat disturbing or offensive juxtaposition, say about visual rhetoric, or the visual and its rhetoricity?
ReplyDeleteAs the semester has progressed, I have increasingly found myself reflecting back on Sontag’s comments about context. Thinking of images as rhetorical (versus narrative or argument) enables us to trace them across multiple contexts while at once acknowledging the multiple layers of meaning that have been accrued and our participation in this process. The way in which an image makes an argument is not constrained to the composition of the image itself. Taken from any of the multiple contexts that the images on Molly Erdman’s site are circulating through, the images on Catalgue Living make at the very least an “argument” that viewers do stop for a moment and ponder the beige couch. The rhetoricity of the images, however, relies on the recognizable features within these scenes, features that connect these scenes to other loci of meaning. In order to pickup on these markers “requires multiplicity and repetition with variation to complete the picture in the readers’ minds.” For Tange, this was manifested through the necessary consumption of images through magazines and books. Similarly, Erdman’s website wouldn’t be nearly so successful if she did not also rely on this culture of image consumption that sets up her visual narrative of Elaine and Gary’s life. (for an illustration, glance at reader comments or her facebook page)
Then. . . thinking about an image rhetorically, in my mind, enables us to trace the way in which an image latches onto and circulates within a broader flow of meaning. Here, the images are rhetorical through and by nature of their circulation within a context that included elements of a visual lexicon. Similarly, the Abu Ghraib image connects to a flow of images, opinions, reports, etc. about the war. The rhetoricity of this image extends beyond both its narrative and the argument that we stop and look that it makes. It’s rhetoricity, in my opinion, is functioning in so far as it is able to draw meaning from and contribute meaning to the flow of images within which we are encountering this image.
Like Leigh, I struggle with differentiating visual rhetoric from visual argument. I could perhaps make a distinction by thinking of visual rhetoric as argument applied in a specific rhetorical situation. I like Katie’s take on Sontag’s idea of context, and tracing images “across multiple contexts while at once acknowledging the multiple layers of meaning that have been accrued and our participation in this process.” Perhaps it’s not what the image is that’s rhetorical, but what is done with the image that is rhetorical? Perhaps this is only sometimes the case-- in “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments” Blair discuss images both as figuring into an argument and being an argument. Is it the context that allows us to understand the image as an argument or as a factor of an argument? Is the image of this blog post an argument on its own? Can it be factored into other arguments? It seems the answer to both of these questions is yes, because of the ambiguous nature of an image that has been discussed throughout the semester. So maybe images can be rhetorical within themselves, a particle of a larger rhetorical piece, both, or neither?
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read through Tange’s astute analysis of the visual rhetoric of Victorian domestic space. But while I was reading it, I kept wondering, where is the rhetoric happening? Who is orchestrating this rhetoric? There are so many key roles—society, architects, homeowners, servants, guests—are they each selling and buying into a single worldview? Thinking back to Josh’s point on control and power, who has the agency? Or, is there a separate rhetoric for each role, to can pull out different arguments? Would this elasticity cheapen the idea of visual rhetoric—where are the boundaries?
oops, I didn't realize I was in Jacob's blogger account--the above comment is by me, not Jacob!
ReplyDeleteMixed emotions: How does one choose a side? The picture that Dr. Yancey posted flabbergasted me. I am glad that we had the prefatory warning; yet, I was not prepared for the image. Hill argues that images “prompt emotional reactions” and explains that once the view has seen the image “they tend to override his or her rational faculties, resulting in a response that is unreflective and irrational” (26). I agree with this. As soon as I saw the image, I turned my head. However, until recently , “If images, by their nature, prompt irrational and unreflective responses, then they are best avoided rather than studied closely, and they certainly have no place in the classroom”. I chuckled when Hill claimed this as “cognitive laziness” (33). While reading, the notion of the “non-example” came into my head. Yet, this image surely is a rhetorical image begging for meaning to be interposed upon it, or made from it. The question up for debate: Is the image narrative or persuasive? Could it be both?
ReplyDeleteAfter the initial shock of the images, I searched for meaning. Blair says, “it is one thing to hear a description of these fates; it is quite another, far more vivid and immediate, to see them with our own eyes…One can communicate visually with much more force and immediacy than verbal communication allows” (53). Later in the chapter he clarifies that his point is that “as narratives tell stories that have ‘logical’ resolutions, and hence function as arguments” (56). Then, accordingly to Blair these are two over lapping constructs of rhetorically viewing images.
A modern 21st century rendition of Tange’s argument of “how to achieve a proper home” is found in the blog Catalogue Living (277). In tying together Catalog Living to Hill’s explanation of the “Transfer of Emotions”, he argues that “persuasion implies that the audience has given the issue some thought and come to a conscious decision. Instead, advertisers want to transform people. They want to compel people to buy a product without even knowing why they’re buying it—as a visceral response to as stimulus, not as a conscious decision” (37). The narrative life of Gray and Elaine play into this persuasion of “happiness” as displayed through catalogues.
Blair suggests that the “narratives we formulate for ourselves from visual images can easily shape our attitudes”, and therefore, persuade us. The idea of free will allows the audience to be in control of the emotions, attitudes, and levels of persuasion that is created from an image. Blair then uses the argument of color persuasion; yet, we are all affected differently to various shades and color systems.
My last thoughts on the readings and the image for the week are summed up by Blair and Hill, “ Seeing in believing, even if what we are watching is invented, exaggerated, half-truths or lies” (56). In order to find the truth in an image as Hill says, “Rhetorical images are ubiquitous, powerful, and important. We need to embrace them, not only as scholars, but also as educators, and teach students to use them effectively and responsibly” (38).
Hill and Blair both assert that visuals, by their visceral appeals to emotion, provoke irrational, unreflective responses to their arguments. This “unconscious causation” (Blair, 57) which precludes the viewers resistance to visual arguments, contributes to some rhetoricians’ skepticism as to the existence of visual rhetoric. This concern about the role of emotion in visual argument/persuasion reminds me of Foss’s separation of aesthetic from rhetorical responses to images. From my standpoint as an artist, I think emotions and aesthetics both operate as meaning-making strategies for image-makers and viewers, in that they connect to the context in which visuals are made and viewed. For that matter, I think emotions and aesthetics operate in verbal rhetoric as well. A classic example might be the speech by Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar, which also included a powerful visual – Ceasar’s body.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to me that after discussing the “irresistible,” irrational, emotional power of images, Blair went on to talk about the role of context in creating visual meaning. By framing visual arguments as enthymemes, he highlights the role of shared context in visual meaning making and the astuteness of the visual arguer in terms of rhetorical skill, and understanding the audience. To Blair, context is so important in visual meaning making because so much of the visual argument must be left unsaid. I know all these rhetoricians like to bag on “high art” but Blair’s discussion of context in visual argument is a pretty good explanation for how an art world functions to give meaning to art works.
Hill’s and Blair’s discussions of emotion in visual imagery are almost the polar opposite of Sontag’s, who posited that repeated exposure to shocking images desensitizes viewers to their meaning and lessens their impact. This contrast between Sontag and Hill and Blair could be one reason why Dr. Yancey chose this image for the blog. Personally, it has been a long time since I have seen any of these Abu Ghraib images, and seeing this image on the blog did provoke a strong emotional reaction in me – shock, disgust, shame, horror. Even now, I am composing my response in MS Word purposely so I don’t have to keep looking at that image. So, Hill and Blair have a point. However, thinking back to the time period when this image was first released, and reproduced so widely, I remember feeling shocked at first, but I also remember feeling less shocked and less interested as time passed and these images became familiar, losing some of their power. So, Sontag also has a point.
The Abu Graib image also points to the role of context in creating meaning. There is a big difference between the rhetoric of this image in its original context (when the complicit soldiers took this picture) and the contexts in which the rest of the world knows it.
I find myself agreeing with Hill, and much of the rest of the class, in the sense that restricted a visual to our emotions won't allow us to productively understand Hill's original question: "How, exactly, do images persuade?" (25) With that being said, I would argue that the given image blends representational rhetoric, "visuals clearly designed to represent a recognizable person (soldier), object, or situation (torture) (Hill 25), while argumentative, sort of like Jessica's point. In other words, I think the image oscillates between persuasion and argument. I think because of the context the image is placed, I am challenged to, Hill suggests, move beyond my emotions and question what this image is doing and how it contributes to the discussion. I noticed that after my initial shock, I think the image lost much of its "presence" (29) in that, like Hill's example with the image versus the statistics of the starving children, I noticed that I distanced myself from the image because my lack of visual perception concerning any personal experiences with war and torture. I would assume that my sister, a former US Army Chaplain, would have a very different response.
ReplyDeleteYet, in my attempt to answer the question of the role of "seeing" or defining/interpreting visuals as "rhetorical, I wondered why narratives can't be considered as an argument? I only ask because I think about constructed visual narratives that have been designed to oppress over the years, and its normalizing affect on generations. Yet, I also see how over time, other narratives are created to resist the monolithic or dominant narrative (think of the increase of minorities in film and advertising).
I also see how these images become something else entirely over time, even when they want to remain the same. I am thinking of Tange's point about the ideology buried in the visual images from the Victorian period used to subconsciously reinforce gender roles and the idea of "home" life. However, she also chronicles the "disjunction between the Victoriana of today and the realities of the Victorian visual rhetoric of home" (298). In other words, I believe Tange to value context as being a locator of the visual's "truth value" (Hill 44).
So, what does seeing visuals as rhetorical add to visual rhetoric? I think it adds a complicated depth to a burgeoning field of study.
Since my post decided to get lost in cyberspace, I think I will try again. Hopefully, I can make the same points in a more concise manner.
ReplyDeleteI think that seeing visuals as rhetorical relies heavily on the audience's perception and interpretation of the visual. In viewing the above image again, I can't say that I was emotionally charged because we had spent time in class discussing it. So, while Sontag would say that we are taking this image out of its original context, and thus amplifying the "everyday" of the military torture Leigh spoke of, the image didn't have the same presence with me. In fact, because of the context I bring to the image (my loose understanding of military tactics and the over-saturated media that reinforces this understanding) reduces this grotesque image to the statistics of the hungry children in Hill's example. Like Josh points out, Berger is great in that he brings this audience awareness, but he fails to add Hill's connection to the psychological, Blair's connection to the political, or much of Tange's historical (and loss of original intent over time) perspective.
One point I am having a problem with, one that is on the opposite end of Leigh's, is the separation of narrative and argument. I believe that narratives can present enthymemes that privilege one story over another. So, I don't really think images can simply be esthetic; instead, I think they are much like the Victorian images: loaded with ideology.
So, what does this all mean? I think seeing visuals as rhetorical can expand our means of communication while identifying sources of miscommunication.
Leigh stated that she had difficulty understanding the rhetorical aspect of visual rhetoric since she equated rhetoric with argument, and for her, argument was absent in many of the artifacts filed under the category of visual rhetoric. In trying to understand the rhetorical aspect of visual rhetoric, I always equated rhetoric with persuasion rather than argument. As such, seeing visuals as rhetorical suggests to me that the visuals have a persuasive quality to them, which is different, if we take Blair to heart, from the visuals forming an argument. Re-envisioning Reboul’s definition, Blair says an item is persuasive if it causes a change in believe, attitude, and/or conduct and if that change is ultimately the result of choice (rather than, say, coercion) on the part of the audience (42-3). He claims arguments are intended to persuade, but not all forms of persuasion are arguments (e.g., the robber using the gun). I find his definition of persuasion to be almost too capacious in that almost anything has the ability to be persuasive (hence, I guess, why many of us see so many artifacts, not just language, to be rhetorical). Regardless, both Leigh and I seem to be asking for something similar from the visual; that is, we expect the visual, if it really is visual rhetoric, to call for some sort of change. (Whether that change happens or not doesn’t determine whether the visual is rhetorical, for as Hill demonstrates in referencing the psychology studies, people “will usually accept the [argument] that reflects or reinforces his or her already-held opinions and assumptions” (28).)
ReplyDeleteSo if we see the Abu Ghraib image as rhetorical (using Blair’s frame), then we are saying it has the potential to elicit some sort of change in belief, attitude, and conduct. I’d say the image definitely has that potential. As a quick example, let’s say you held the belief that the United States’ treatment of prisoners of war was both humane and moral. This image would most likely cause you to change that belief, as it stands as a piece of evidence to the contrary; it captures an action that appears to be the antithesis of humane and moral.
However, this image can only function in that sense when it is grounded in context. In other words, if you looked at this image and had neither seen nor heard of it before, the image wouldn’t be able to engender the type of change in belief noted above. We wouldn’t know where the image was taken, who the two people are, or what is even happening (though we could guess). Instead, our first response would probably be a visceral one; as Stephen says, “emotion makes the first stand.” That emotional reaction might be that this photo captures an immoral and inhumane act, but our reaction probably wouldn’t result in a change in belief, attitude, and/or conduct because we couldn’t identify clearly the proposition.
Leigh admits that she didn’t “know that much about the event and [had to spend] an unpleasant thirty minutes researching what happened.” I’ll admit that I too didn’t know that much, resulting in me asking Natalie, “Hey, what’s going on here?” In both cases, we had to procure information about this photo, we had to gather a context, and those together constructed a narrative for each of us, a lens through which to see and make sense of the image. In this sense, we were partaking in the epistemological process Berger describes.
I guess this is all to say that narrative and persuasion can overlap. In what I’ve laid out, I couldn’t determine whether the image was persuasive (or an argument) unless I had additional information and context, and in gathering the two, I was simultaneously building a narrative for the image. And with that narrative, I can then look at the image and try to determine its persuasive nature; I could look for a proposition.
Also, I have to wonder aloud if this image is actually more rhetorical than the verbal counterpart. As Blair says, visuals have the ability to be more persuasive “due to the enormously high number of images that can be conveyed in a short time” (51). In other words, the image, due to how quickly it can circulate and be consumed compared to the verbal, has a greater chance to be persuasive. However, what’s interesting to me (and somewhat limiting about the visual) is that, as implied above, the verbal is most often necessary for the visual to be persuasive. I guess this is why he says visuals, if they are arguments, contain both visual and verbal elements (49). In short, arguments, though they can manifest in the visual, nonetheless appear verbally bound: even when we try to understand the argument inherent in a visual, we have to articulate it verbally, through either writing or speech.
ReplyDeleteLike most everyone stated, that image was like a slap in the face when I signed onto the blog. Like JTodd and Leigh mentioned, I was quite literally stunned into silence (talk about reifying Blair’s notion of the power of emotions). I had to leave the blog. I felt like I couldn’t say anything analytical or scholarly about the image when I was still…well…off kilter. When I came back, I felt like Kendra; the “presence” had worn off a bit; I was mentally prepared for it, and suddenly I wanted facts. Wikipedia came to my rescue, and I could not help but notice how I was living out Blair’s theory: emotions immediately overcome, you become less capable of immediate logical appeal, and then you want to move on to hear the argument and its propositions.
ReplyDeleteI was living out Blair, when ironically, I had not really agreed with him. His argument revolved around the assumption that there can be a very nice, clean separation between our emotional functions and our logic reasoning. Can they really be placed in such a dichotomy? Can there really be a linear relationship between the two? My reaction felt a lot messier then “well I felt emotions; time to move on to logic.” Sonny starts to dissect this in her post, and I have to agree. I think this also connects to Ror’s notion that emotion, narrative, persuasion, and argument can (and likely do) overlap in our processes of visual intake and analysis. Also, my reaction brought me back to the discussion I had just had with my students about technological determinism and social feedback loops. Did I “naturally” react emotionally and then logically or is that simply the way I have been taught to do so in our culture and in the academy? Could a new generation of students and “digital native” be taught to “naturally” react in different ways? Do they already?
Finally, I could not help but see the important of dissemination and reception in this discussion. A lot of us are toying with the notion that this photo means nothing without the context of the event (we need to know the premise of the enthymeme). Of course that is impossible to refute, but I cannot help but add that this photo also means little to nothing without its dissemination and reception. What use is this photo in the rhetorical or argumentative sense if it simply existed on the memory card of one of the soldier’s cameras? What if it was only printed out and shared among American soldiers who worked there? Is it rhetorical without an objecting audience? Does it make an argument if you are the one in the picture or if you identify with the subject in the photo? I think that dissemination and the cultural machine involved in that process is conspicuously missing from these articles and I have to wonder why.