Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

I'm working steadily on my readings in Visual Rhetoric for my third area and I've been thinking about what I plan to blog about this semester.  Visual Rhetoric has always been an interest of mine, especially the rhetoric of photographs, ever since I was a teenager and I would pour over photo albums of relatives long past.   I would sit trying to imagine the scene moments before and after the photograph was taken, staring at the clothing worn by the people in the photo, the background of the photographs.  I was particularly interested in the black and white photographs of my grandmother who died months before I was born.

And, while I've always been interested in photography and visual rhetoric, I've felt like my interests were "less than scholarly," hence my incessant need to justify this area of interest that underlies many of my papers and posts.  It certainly didn't help when I was writing my MA thesis that a professor of American Literature asked quite cattily if my thesis was going to be about 2 pages.  "After all, what is there really to say about visual rhetoric?  It's not like you can prove any of it."

Well, there is a lot to say about visual rhetoric--the hundreds of books and articles discussing visual rhetoric prove that point.  And, the fact that the Texas Board of Education has now included visual literacy as a component of the state assessment exam, I would argue that there are plenty of people who are concerned with visual rhetoric.  And, while I can't "prove" any of it, that isn't really the point. 

Still, my feelings of hesitation in regard to my interests, like with my thesis, continued.  In my thesis, specifically, I argued that images cannot be examined without regard for the texts that audiences have read or the texts that authors include with the images.  I argued that images and texts together constitute the image-text genre.  However, I could find little that discussed the importance of texts in regard to images.  Textual or spoken discourse was hardly discussed in regard to the interpretation of photographs.  After all, photographs are messages without codes (a la Barthes). 

But, as a rhetorician, I couldn't and still can't discredit the profound influence of texts on our interpretation of images.  This is perhaps why I've found  W. J. T. Mitchell's Picture Theory such an interesting and relevant look at the ways in which image's meanings are constructed by the contexts in which they appear.  However, while I examined the influence of texts on images through genre theory, Mitchell through semiotics.  Mitchell examines the "Pictorial Turn," or the cultural move from primary textual communication to mixed media--primarily the conjunction of images and texts.  Mitchell discusses the ways in which audiences use images and texts together in particular, isolated situations to create meaning.  Mitchell and I both address the inadequacy rhetoricians often experience when trying to appropriate a textual-based criticism on visual media.  For me and my studies, Mitchell's book served 1) to illustrate the work that still needs to be done in the field of visual rhetoric and 2) how proud I am of the work I did on my thesis.  It may not have been as comprehensive as I would've liked it to have been, but Mitchell's book showed me that I'm on the right track...

posted by: rgregory at 15:59 | link | comments |

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