We’ve now considered various dimensions of visual rhetoric, including the more utilitarian located in yet another history. Choose one of these questions. What is the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric? What is required for an adequate theory of visual rhetoric?
I’ll start us out and pick the latter question: what is required for an adequate theory of visual rhetoric? For me, there are a few necessary components, the first of which is a clear approach. Put differently, there needs to be a definition of what constitutes visual rhetoric—or at least an explanation as to what realm of visual rhetoric this theory is germane. In other words, one isn’t going to construct a theory for the field as a whole; rather, the theory is going to be grounded in a particular context and is going to be pertinent to certain types of visually rhetorical texts. While I’m not a fan of dichotomies, I see two distinct approaches to visual rhetoric: design and artifact (and these two are probably messier and overlap more than I like to think). Nonetheless, articulating what approach this theory falls under, what type of visual rhetoric this theory is dealing with, is an important first step.
ReplyDeleteAn adequate theory also needs a rhetorical foundation; that is, the theorist needs to explicate the rhetorical aspect of the visual: what about the visual (however defined) is rhetorical? Another way of looking at this is to ask, “What is the action induced through the visual’s rhetoric power?” If we see rhetoric as a catalyst for action, then what actions is the visual invoking? How is the visual persuasive?
What I’m really driving at here is an everyday application. My biggest qualm with theory is that it too often exists in a vacuum; there’s too often no pragmatic function. When I finish reading theory, I’m often left asking, “Well, what am I to do with that? What’s the point?” For a theory to be useful, we need to be able to apply it; the theory needs to form a lens from which we can see how the visual works in the everyday world. In short, the theory needs to make a meaningful contribution to the field.
This might go without saying, but I good theory is also equipped with specific examples. Just as important, those examples need to resonate with the audience (a good example of which would be Hill and Helmer’s use of Ground Zero Spirit). The examples should also beget other examples; in other words, we need to be able to extend the theory beyond the examples provided. When we read an example, we should be able to say, “So it’s sort of like x, which is sort of like y, which is sort of like z.”
Lastly, an adequate theory needs to appeal to its audience. Perhaps a first step, then, involves the theorist identifying an audience. This seems like a given in the composing of almost any text, but it seems particularly important in terms of visual rhetoric because it’s positioned as a subfield rather than a discipline, a subfield that tends to bleed into other disciplines. The approach one takes (e.g., design or artifact) already implies a more finite audience, but so do the sources one pulls from or references. How the theorist creates her frame, what other theorists and texts she draws on, will help clarify for whom the theory is intended and, just as important, what that audience can do with the theory.
On some level, these components may seem basic, even conventional, and it’s probably because I tackled this question through the lens of genre. I asked myself: “What conventions do I consider most important to the genre of academic theory, and more specifically, theory on visual rhetoric?” And for me, those conventions were a clear approach, a rhetorical foundation, a pragmatic application, the inclusion of specific and relatable examples, and a focus on audience.
I'm going to get us started on the first question: what is the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric? I've been keeping a list of seem to be the biggest developments that cause a shift in visual rhetoric--technology, adaptation by a new discourse community, socio-cultural concerns, and new mediums/genres--, and to some extent, I would argue that this question bleeds into the second because understanding how history changes visual rhetoric is necessary in order to see how important kairos and the rhetorical moment are to the theory of visual rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteTechnology changes visual rhetoric. Throughout history, new technological advances resulted in an increase in visual rhetoric. Invention evolves, distribution widens, conventions adapt, purpose changes, new audiences are reached. We've learned from Sontag the way the camera changed the field of photography and visual rhetoric. The Internet (even though I'll also add that to new medium) has been a fertile site for the evolution of visual rhetoric.
Kostelnick gives a lengthy discussion of graphing techniques in chapter four, but it serves to illustrate what happens when conventions/visual texts evolve within a new community at a new rhetorical moment. Moving away from mechanical engineers' architectural conventions, political economists and statisticians begin using scientific graphing techniques; engineers use the graphing techniques/conventions to illustrate land profiles, etc. The same technique becomes adopted by a new discourse community and so its rhetorical range changes as they invent new uses for it and tailor it to adapt to the demands/needs of their discipline.
Likewise, we cannot ignore the way visual rhetoric accommodates socio-cultural changes. What the current culture cares about effects visual rhetoric. Shortly after 9/11, I remember an increase in commercials advertising for men and women to enlist, a renewed emphasis on patriotic rhetoric, an increase in American paraphernalia (flags, support our troop stickers, posters, etc). This was a moment where American culture shared a similar concern and so the visuality of texts change. I think in the past 9 years, I've seen more material incorporate American ideals/values than I remember ever seeing before. Even if the change is only thematic, it is worth noting that visual rhetoric adapts its focus (at the very least) based on socio-cultural concerns.
New mediums (or genres) is always an opportunity for visual rhetoric to evolve. The Internet is a very egalitarian medium and it allows users to resist authority, assert individuality and control. We've got blogs and Facebook and photo/video essays and protest sites. There is an abundance of room for visuality in this medium. Unlike other mediums, the Internet offers an almost consequence-free composition space and I often feel that visuality has become volatile; it's graphic and severe and unapologetic, but I posit that this is the result of a medium that encourages individual expression.
Thinking about the relationship between history and visual rhetoric, I have taken note of developments that have caused (and continue to cause) visual rhetoric to adapt and grow and redefine itself. For me, this includes technology, adoption by discourse community, the kairotic moment, and new mediums or genres.
What is the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric?
ReplyDeleteHistory shapes visual rhetoric in much the same way that history shapes rhetoric: by contextualizing it and situating it in a matrix of meanings. How can one really have a rhetoric without a history? What can an image mean without a history of images, ideas, language and experience to compare it to? Meaning emerges from a milieu of meanings which develop in a history.
This history affecting visual rhetoric gets expressed in a range of ways we've already discussed in class. Probably most prominent for us has been iconography and social history: the imagistic antecedents of iconic photographs like the Ground Zero photo. Icons only have meaning and power because they stand atop a history of images and a chain of referents. Even beneath the layer of explicit meaning-making, history shapes material production of imagery. What gets taken for granted in the production and consumption of images - the frames through which we even see the image - actually echoes the history that created those everyday conventions. Real, material meaning becomes forgotten over time and evolves into tradition, shaping the form of visual rhetoric as much as the content.
Like Leigh and Larkin, I see the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric as important because a historical understanding provides context, and context is definitely important in all things rhetorical. We saw an example of understanding historical context related to visual rhetoric in Cara A. Finnegan’s chapter “Doing Rhetorical History of the Visual: The Photograph and the Archive.” Finnegan argues “that those interested in visual culture may benefit if they mobilize the tools of rhetorical history to sort out three moments in the life of an image for which a critic must account: production, reproduction, and circulation” (199). Tools for understanding history, then, are tools that can help us understand visual rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteTurning to Kostelnick and Hassett, we can see visual-concerning links from history to conventions to rhetoric. An image-based practice must be evident through a history (whether long or short) to form conventional codes, and “these codes do important rhetorical work, regardless of whether all of those users can name or even distinguish the specific codes” (11). So, because of history we have visual conventions, and through the existence of visual conventions we have visual rhetoric, since adhering or declining to adhere to a convention is a rhetorical choice.
Kostelnick and Hassett would like history to have a more prominent role in visual language—in their conclusion, they call for future studies of visual language histories, for the purpose of understanding and connecting conventional practices of various disciplines and communities (231). Understanding the history of these conventional practices could lead to providing a strong framework for theories of visual rhetoric.
Elizabeth points to the answer that I came up with for the question of history's role in shaping visual rhetoric. History gives us our conventions, sorting through the less valuable designs as determined by social utility and rolling on with the more valuable ones in tow. Like Kostelnick and Hassett, I see an enlightening example of the nature of visual conventions in the story of the little girl who "just knew" that longer lines represented faster cars and shorter ones represented slower ones (168). Just as we learn what the word "car" means through repeated exposure to cars and being told that this thing here is a car, we learn through exposure to conventions what those conventions are meant to represent.
ReplyDeleteK&H give us a number of examples of conventions that changed over time. The line graph is one of the most illustrative ones. The interaction that occurred with and around each individual graph and the conventions that they utilized ran those conventions through history's social, economic, political, and intellectual gears, and the contemporary graph convention is but a point on the ever-changing conventional timeline on which those earlier conventions (and conventions to come) also laid.
It occurred to me as I was reading that section that a conscious understanding of conventions is (usually) critical to mastery of a given subject or activity. Consider Picasso as a master of painting. Other than bodily coordination and access to materials, his understanding of conventions was the key to his becoming the master painter that he was (and to his being able to break those conventions). He saw the conventions of lines, colors, shapes, etc., that you and I do not see. Point is that before Pablo became "Picasso" he had to learn to see the conventions that had been embedded into the art of painting by its history.
Without a starting place, then there is no place to evolve from. As a social society we have always been evolving. With the advancement of knowledge: technology, conventions, etc., the history of VR has been writing itself. Thinking to Project Three: Seeing Venacular Visual Rhetoric, most people in some form are adding to the massive quantity of VR history. Yet, Rory made an excellent point in his discussion of what constitutes an artifact or visual as being part of the VR archive. We must ask, “What action is the image evoking?” The real question is what keeps an image or artifact from being part of the VR archive? How does the everyday “art for arts sake” image/ artifact make it into this archive? We must have specific examples! Yet, because we are constantly evolving by creating, adding/advancing, distributing, then there are a multitude of specific examples. This is a broad statement: but in order to have an adequate theory on VR we must include all of the theorist that we have discussed and all of the attirtubutes of their specific theories. The theory of VR would not be completed if we left out Berger (narrative), Sontag (photography), Kostelnick and Hassett (conventions). Even the examples of the “scene” is a critical part of the history and theory of VR. In conclusion, I am not making any new claims, I am simply arguing that these two questions (What is the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric? What is required for an adequate theory of visual rhetoric?) over lap and feed off of each other.
ReplyDeleteI found this interesting and thought I would share. Even though the idea of students using visuals and images to help in the prewriting/invention process has been around for many decades, the AP Language test has just started to include the analysis of an image as part of the writing portion within the last five years. This is a huge step for VR. Not only are students being asked to look at images which they are inundated with on a daily base, they are now being asked to make an analysis of a visual and support it, therefore asking “what is the argument”? This makes me ponder the question of last week, narrative or argument? Since Berger wrote “Another Way of Telling” in 1982, which focuses on the narrative, and now it is 2010, is the narrative piece part of the history of VR?
First, I have to agree with Stephen and JTodd; it’s almost impossible to conceive of visual rhetoric without a historical component. Visual rhetoric is comprised of historical influences and in turn affects historical situations. K&H like to call this visual rhetoric’s tendency to “roll around” in the historical contexts surrounding it. Bolter and Grusin refer to this as a feedback loop of sorts where one can avoid notions of technological determinism by seeing the relationship of history to visual rhetoric as a constant loop that feeds into itself. Inseparable, I say.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what is really stumping me this week is the latter question, the beast that Ror took on in his monster post. I agree with a lot of what Rory is laying out (foundation, application, examples); however, I am stuck consistently on the definition portion. We have mentioned a few times in class that if we do not define parameters around a term, if we can’t at least say what is NOT visual rhetoric, then the term becomes, well, meaningless. If it applies to everything, it means nothing. As I tried to think about these limits this weekend, I couldn’t help but feel like I had done this mental exercise before. Indeed I had. What was tripping me up was not the "visual" potion of the term visual rhetoric, that is the easier of the two terms to understand (visual: what we see, and as K&H are careful to show us, this can even mean what we see with a layout that includes alphabetic text). What was tripping me up was the term rhetoric. What makes something rhetorical….that’s where I was stuck.
I can’t remember what class it was in, but some of you may remember the hour long discussion we had once about whether the student chairs in the Williams building were in fact a rhetorical composition. At first I felt like the conversation was ridiculous; however, the more we talked the more persuaded I was. The chair was screaming that it had a distinct purpose. The attached desk was also prescribing a certain action that should take place in the desk, writing. The way it only faced in one direction prescribed a traditional teacher-center classroom. And the right-handed dominance made an argument about role of left-handed writers in our culture.
I’m left asking/screaming, “I can’t define visual rhetoric or be comfortable with a theory that defines it unless I really can narrow down what rhetoric is first. What makes something rhetorical and something else arhetorical?” I realized that my notebook from this class is chuck full of questions that center on this problem. Does it matter what the author’s intent was? Must he/she intent it to be rhetorical or does the power of that definition lay with the audience? Must the audience recognize it as rhetoric for it to be “rhetorical?” Must it make an “argument” of sorts? Is it required that it be persuasive in some way? Should it invoke some kind of “action” in the viewer whether it be physical action or mental consciousness?
I’m not sure how to answer these; we all attempted to in that one quick activity in class that got posted to the blog, but if we are being honest we have been trying to define this since Plato’s time. We love a good discussion as rhetoricians, but then we tend to talk ourselves out of specific definitions and parameters in the course of that discussion. Bottom line: it’s difficult for me to conceive of a theory of visual rhetoric until I am more comfortable understanding exactly what it means for something to be “rhetorical.” Furthermore, as a field do we need a “universal/common” definition or is it enough for each theorist to continue defining their version in their introductions before they expound their theories? What do ya’ll think?
I’m going to take on the first question, although like Leigh, I see these two bleeding into each other considerably. Kostelnick writes that “[w]hat readers perceive as novel and conventional, then, depends somewhat on their historical perspective”(47). This perspective, then, according to Kostelnick, might be *somewhat* important, although I would personally say that it’s *fundamental* to visual rhetoric, since it determines the way the image was produced (and how we think about production), how it was delivered and circulated (and how we think about that stuff too), and it formulates the framework in which the viewer-user observes the image (socio-cultural framework) and thinks about it (cognitive frameworks, including memory).
ReplyDeleteI am reading Franco Moretti’s “Style Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740-1850)”—a quantitative analysis of the changing styles of novelistic titles during this period of British literary history. He writes, “[a]s the market expands, titles contract; as they do that, they learn to compress meaning; and as they do that, they develop special “signals” to place books in the right market niche” (153). Moretti mainly focuses on how the length of titles fluctuates and how those fluctuations are tied to the market; however, it’s pretty apparent (the “special ‘signals’ line in particular hints at semiotics) that we could easily follow up Moretti’s work (borrowing his data) with an historical visual analysis of the changing visual conventions of these novels’ cover pages as tied to these changing titles, in much the same way Kostelnick traces the histories of visual conventions in his book. And this might actually be a fruitful endeavor for Visual Rhetoric, because it takes into account Kostelnick’s simultaneously discursive and material histories. I personally tend to think that a material history of visuals might be the most valuable to visual rhetoric since it focuses on the co-evolution of images and technologies (both production and circulation), and I cannot think of images without considering the material context in which the image exists. My (typically long-winded) point here is that I agree that history plays a considerable role in shaping our understanding of visual rhetoric and shaping Visual Rhetoric as a discipline. But what is most interesting about this is that history itself is a process of narratives and thus, as Berger tells us, a process of selection (mine happens to be materialist, post-humanist). The faults of Moretti’s analysis arise (as his critics argue) from the broad selections he makes in his data, some of it leading to conclusions that are too reductionist or lacking in close reading. So, I would say that history serves a hermeneutical purpose in that it gives us a framework to see and determines the methodologies we might employ; however, as the different texts we have read attest, each history determines what we don’t see.
So history can stand as a foundation for a discipline, since it determines the constraints of sight and the types of work it does. Consider, for example, Rhetoric and Composition’s search for a history to ground itself and develop ethos in the academy—returning to the Ancient Greeks, examining different literacy histories etc. What, then, if we write the history of visual rhetoric alongside the history of rhetoric and composition (ie. the history of rhet/comp has always been the history of images)? How might that inflect both visual rhetoric and rhetoric and composition? How might we be able to incorporate the aesthetic, the vernacular, the cognitive etc. and all the frameworks we encounter in this class into a comprehensive history of visual rhetoric that is also distinctly within the domain of Rhetoric and Composition?
I wanted to take the history question, but since Larkin pretty much said everything I had thought to say and so many other people talked about history, I am taking on the theory question. In my notes from our readings, I flagged this passage from Hill (26): “Ultimately, a comprehensive theory of visual persuasion will need to incorporate the insights gathered from a variety of viewpoints and methodologies, including cultural, psychological, and textual studies, and attempt to explicate how the mechanisms identified by these different methodologies work together in the production of, reception of, and response to persuasive images.” I think this is a pretty good start, except that I’m not sure I would limit the definition of rhetoric to “persuasion.” Natalie raised a good point that developing a theory of visual rhetoric depends on a clear, useful definition of rhetoric. I think each author we’ve read has a different definition, which is modified and complicated by looking at images rhetorically. I agree with Natalie, also that it seems like scholars and philosophers since classical times have been trying to define rhetoric. I know I’ve said this before, but as an artist, I don’t think I would separate rhetoric from aesthetics in images (or from poetics, ala Aristotle). However, I also realize that many other kinds of images besides those that are explicitly aesthetically framed, can be viewed as rhetorical.
ReplyDeleteThis brings me back around to history, and the specific languages and lineages of different visual media and image contexts. I’m not sure why Hill didn’t seek insights from explicitly visual disciplines (fine art, art history, different types of design, art education, aesthetics, etc.) in order to explicate how meaning is produced and received through visual images. Although I haven’t really investigated this yet, I’m willing to bet that different kinds of mechanisms for making visual meanings operate in different image contexts and differ from one visual medium to another.
I'd like to pick up on the general sentiment that the role of history in shaping visual rhetoric is inseparable from "an adequate theory of visual rhetoric." To this end there are two approaches to the history question that have woven themselves through the blog. A: the role of history in our understanding of visual rhetoric as a field of study. And B: the role of history in our understanding of visual rhetoric with reference to specific images and kinds of images.
ReplyDeleteLarkin was among the more succinct when he wrote: "History shapes visual rhetoric in much the same way that history shapes rhetoric: by contextualizing it and situating it in a matrix of meanings." How, he and many others ask, "can we have rhetoric without a history?"
What factors, I wonder, inform this "shaping" that Larkin and others have suggested that history does? A text and an image pass differently through the matrices of meanings that commingle throughout our lived experience. If we are looking at the "shaping" of a rhetorical element as it passes through and across these matrices over time, my first response would be to look more closely at circulation and what motivates/generates it. The next question I would ask, then, is how can we begin to account for and explain the circulation of a rhetorical element? Here, it becomes clear that "rhetorical elements" do not circulate in the same ways and that the visual just might need to be distinguished from the textual. If the means of this circulation is at the root of a definition of rhetoric, and an explanation of the circulation of visual and textual rhetorical elements is different, then perhaps we ought not consider the 'visual' of visual rhetoric as an adjective. Perhaps we are left with the rhetorical visual and the rhetorical text. [Metaphorically, yellow means two completely different things when it precedes car and submarine :-) And, yes, history plays a role in that too. See A above.] When visual modifies rhetoric _the rhetorical_ is the stable center that is only modified by visual, textual, or oral. And thus, it remains tied to the ways in which we have historically thought about rhetoric in textual and oral traditions.
So, if we are going to think about the role of history in shaping the rhetorical visual, perhaps we should begin with the construction of a record that has generally been assumed to be analogous to that of the rhetorical text. Some of the revisionist-leaning pieces that we have read this semester have illustrated that the circulation of linear text and image are not analogous (although, neither are either independent of the other). Perhaps, this difference is where we should begin to articulate an emerging definition of rhetoric, a definition that at accounts for the history of scholarship that it would be emerging from and responding to as well as the unique history of the image and the way this history is made for images of the rhetorical type.