Barthes Rhetoric of the Image

“How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end?  And if it ends, what is there beyond?”  In “Rhetoric of the Image,” these are the questions that Barthes attempts to address, focusing his attention on the advertising image.  Images produce signification and Barthes desires to understand better how this production happens, which he proposes arises in the delivery of three messages: linguistic, coded iconic and a non-coded iconic.

Linguistic: written text (title and caption that nearly accompanies every image), which has two levels: denotation and connotation (in Barthes’ example of the pasta advertisement, the name of the pasta company is denotation and “Italianicity” is the connotation)

Coded: all the messages of the image, the totality (in Barthes’ example, freshness, Italianicity)

Non-coded: what image we actually see (in the example, vegetables, pasta, grocery bag)

The linguistic messages direct readers, and in particular directions, as readers “choose some [messages] and ignore others in their encounter the “floating signifiers” (39).  “The [written] text [that accompanies an image] helps to identify purely and simply the elements of the scene and the scene itself; it is a matter of a denoted description of the image (a description which is often incomplete) or, in Hjelmslev’s terminology, of an operation (as opposed to connotation)” (39). In other words, readers can understand explicitly what the image wants to articulate.  At this point, the image and text operate at the denotation level. Barthes posits that one of the functions of the linguistic is anchorage, which allows “the text [to] direct the reader through signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others; by means of an often subtle dispatching, it remote-controls him towards a meaning chosen in advance” (40). When the written text functions on the symbolic level, it “no longer guides identification but interpretation” (39).  The other function of the linguistic is relay, in which text and image are complementary.  What the relay produces is “story, the anecdote, the diegesis” (41).

Both text and image, as Barthes continues, are never presented in a “pure state” and “even if a totally ‘naïve’ image were to be achieved, it would immediately join the sign of naivety and be completed by a third ― symbolic ― message” (42).  Thus, even in the denoted message(s), images and texts are relinquished from their “literalness” and relegated to the symbolic order.  Again, we see Nietzsche’s position on language, although now not restricted to written language, but images as well, as all metaphorical.  Images (and really photographs) become metaphors, although unlike language, they appear much more naturalized.  What I see here is a rethinking of Nietzsche’s outline: nerve stimuli à images (as well as words) à concepts.  I forgot to highlight, a very important highlight, in my other post that Nietzsche does make a clear distinction that images and words are not given equal value (although I know my outline doesn’t make that apparent).  An image is the first level of metaphor, and isn’t necessarily Nietzsche’s interest, and the sound, as it imitates the image, is the second metaphor. It is only at this second metaphor that we begin formulating concepts. “Let us further consider the formation of concepts.  Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin” (1174). So, Barthes explores the formulation of concepts in particular to photograph images, something that Nietzsche, although he identifies images as metaphors, either didn’t care much about or chose to ignore how images and their metaphors contribute to concepts.  

What I found particularly interesting in Barthes’ chapter, particularly in the “The denoted image,” is how he connects consciousness to the photograph.  He remarks, “the type of consciousness the photograph involves is indeed truly unprecedented, since it establishes not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing (which any copy could provoke) but an awareness of its having-been-there.  What we have is a new space-time category: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority” (44). With this remark, I began to think about Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and his appropriated concept of ‘homogeneous, empty time’ (Anderson borrows this idea from Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations, in which Benjamin suggests the idea is particularly important to the emergence of modernity, and applies it to the construct of the nation and national consciousness), which .  This ‘homogeneous, empty time’ provided a means for people to think of others who are active in the community as they are as well.  The concept emerged with the novel, which provided its reader with a ‘God-position’ or objective view of a social landscape.  This concept is one of two parts to Anderson’s ‘homogeneous, empty time’: the ability to see multiple activities and people all at the same time; the second part being the conception of people embedded in ‘societies’, where they are sociological entities with a reality that their members can be connected without ever becoming acquainted (Anderson 25-26). This same scenario can be, and was, repeated in the novel and newspaper.  As readers read these two genres, they begin to identify themselves with a community, within a nation.  The reader begins to understand that others are active in the same way they are and have a commonality.

In my undergraduate thesis, I further extended Anderson and Benjamin’s concept of ‘homogenous, empty time’ to what I called Live Homogenous, Empty Real Time: the ability to see live events unfold in real time.  Similar to Anderson, I connected Live Homogenous, Empty Real Time to images and discourse of the American flag around Sept. 11, 2001 as a way to illuminate a fixation of the flag and deployment of American nationalism.  In other words, I saw ‘homogenous, empty time’ happening at an accelerated rate for discourses, mythologies and narratives to be constructed.  I also believe that ‘homogenous, empty time’ could not fit with emergent technologies, especially at the mass level, as television and the Internet offered a reconceptualizing of national consciousness.  While I didn’t focus much on Live Homogenous, Empty Real Time as a dimension of postmodernity and postmodernism (I slightly hinted at it), I think the concept should consider its particularity as a postmodern condition, and possibly I could expound upon the connection in a paper or possibly in my thesis.   

But, coupled with Postcomposition and Sid’s assertion that spatiality ought to be appropriated in writing, I would like to begin, not necessarily in this post, to consider how images, writing, spatiality and the nation function together.  Both Benjamin and Anderson direct our attention to the novel and print culture in formations of national consciousness as temporal. We see, as Dobrin has underscored, the attention to temporality and writing (primarily because of literature’s influence on Rhetoric and Composition).  But what if we consider a ‘homogenous, empty space’ or something along the lines of my argument: Live Homogenous, Empty Real Space?  I’m so conditioned, I think, in many ways to think about time and cultural phenomena.  But what about space?  This is why I think Sid’s hitting on an interesting point with space, and writing studies neglect of conceptualizing it.  And Sid may already be articulating a ‘homogenous, empty space’ or Live Homogenous, Empty Real Space.  Of course, my interest would lie in what subjects write about the nation with spatiality, how subjects write about the nation with spatiality, where subjects write about the nation, why subjects write the nation in particular spaces, et al.  But I think I’m seeing some connections, although I need to flesh out more ideas.

Barthes also articulates a definition of rhetoric as a set of connotators and appearing as a signifying aspect of ideology (49).  Rhetorics vary in their substance (sound, image, gesture, et al.), but “not necessarily by their form; it is even probable that there exists a single rhetorical form, common for instance to dream, literature and image” (49).  With this definition and conception of rhetoric, Barthes shifts away from, or desires to rethink, ancient and classical rhetoric structural issues, thus focusing on how rhetoric functions with culture.  And it is here, with the connection to culture, that culture, whether national, gender, racial or class, attempts to naturalize itself and its ideologies. As Barthes posits that rhetoric is constituted by numerous messages and develops as a part of ideology, I wonder what he makes of formed narratives.  I, possibly mistakenly, have typically considered an ideology as part of a larger narrative (in other words, narratives are composed of numerous ideologies and ideologies are composed of numerous messages/connotators). And this is also where I often get confused with Barthes: In Mythologies, he tends to equate ideology with myth, whereas I see myth and narrative as synonymous.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. 3rd ed. New York: Verso, 2006. Print.

Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text. Trans. by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Print.

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print.

Sid Dobrin Postcomposition

Postcomposition Sidney I. Dobrin

Sidney Dobrin begins his book with asserting that composition studies will end at some point, if not very soon, or at least be redefined.  He makes clear that “it [the end of composition studies] won’t cause or signify the end of writing (or even writing instruction)” (1).  Early in the book, he defines writing and composition, stating that “composition (studies) [is] an academic discipline and composing [is] an act that is chained by that discipline to an understanding of student subjects performing that act (often only as academic performance). Writing is a phenomenon that requires the attention of intellectual and scholarly inquiry and speculation beyond composition. Writing is more than composition (studies)” (2).  Dobrin argues that composition studies needs to redirect much of its focus, specifically on writing instead of (writing) subjects and pedagogy, and calls for a disruption of the field, a particular disruption of epistemological and bureaucratic systems that perpetuate a neglect of the study of writing. He also discusses the historical lack of a methodology in composition studies, hence part of the reason why the writing classroom falls short on the purpose of teaching writing. This lack of a methodology connects to Sanchez argument too, in which Sanchez contends that epistemological and ontological concerns needn’t be addressed, but methodology ought to “be updated” (his proposed neo-empiricism) (“Outside the Text” 242). What I see here is the methodology will enable a disruption to the field.  As I see it (in connecting Sanchez and Dobrin’s positions), instead of “composition studies cast[ing] the classroom and the classroom compositionists as heroic figures and construe[ing] research as useful only if it reports on or has application to classroom practice” (9), the field can reconceptualize itself and its goals through methodological disruption. I, too, see this disruption important, particularly if we teachers desire to create a radical classroom and pedagogy.   

The first chapter, “Disrupting Composition Studies,” suggests a shift (student) subject to writing, which will in turn shift Composition Studies’ focus to writing theory and away from the realms of cultural phenomena ― ideologies, politics, subjectivities, agencies, identities, discourses, and rhetorics ― and how they exist before writing. “much of what is touted as composition theory is not theory about writing but theory about how writers write—or more often about writers themselves, issues of identity” (11). In addition, the field will shift away from an emphasis on writing pedagogies. Both these focuses ― student subject and pedagogy ― have limited the field’s borders and produced a conservative framework in thinking about composition, the classroom, teaching, and, most importantly, writing. In moving away from this focus and approach ― (student) subject, pedagogy and agency ― we, as he posits, develop a postcomposition (and actually a rethinking of what composition is), wherein we focus intently on the writing (although he also identifies the impossibility of concepts such as subject and agency). It sounds like Dobrin wants a balance of research on subject, agency and writing, which would enable a better understanding of subject/subjectivity, as well as the empowerment students have in writing ideology and culture (versus ideology and culture writing the students).  He is not the only proponent of this reconceptualizing of writing and subject, as he remarks, “Sánchez’s work and Susan Miller’s “Technologies of Self?-Formation” make clear that such an approach to understanding subject-formation is essentially the work of interpretation and that such approaches deny students—or at least deny that students have—the power to write the very artifacts of their own subjectivities” (14).

Dobrin contends that composition studies and compositionists resist theory for institutional (funding is available), as well as methodogolocial (the objects of study ― students ― are readily available) reasons, because of a lack of identifiable, tangible assessment of improvement (as the field is filled with teachers, bureaucrats, et al. who all believe in “improvement” of students’ writing).

 

The Space of Writing

The “post” in postcomposition that Sid calls for is a spatial, not a temporal, understanding of writing.  Composition, in continuing a literary tradition of reading and writing, has typically embraced the temporal, a conceptualizing that writing and texts function with and in time.  Dobrin discusses Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766), a analysis of two strands of art ― poetry and painting ― and their relationship to time and space, to exemplify how composition has submitted to ideologies and methodologies that English departments, with their focus on Literature, such as poetry and fiction, function in progressive time.  In contrast, painting functions spatially.  What I see here is an interesting connection to images and the writing and composing of images.  If writing and composing comes to encompass something more than the written word, such as images, we can develop a different, and much more complex, understanding of what it means to write and what writing means.  But even if writing and composing doesn’t move beyond the written word,  the written word could continue to be performed spatially (as Sid exemplifies when he writes in the margins).

Dobrin identifies that composition studies have begun to accept spatiality in writing, particularly geographic and cartographic metaphors in which often space and place are conflated, as a way to explore student subjects (33).  But Dobrin quickly remarks on the limitations of metaphors, referencing Althusser’s position that metaphors limit theory and that theory, if one desires for a full development of it, requires a move beyond description and beyond theory (34).  Calling for a move beyond metaphors for describing writing will, a la Dobrin, break through the limits of compositions (as the current situation renders composition studies to continue to describe how students write or how teachers can best instruct students to write).  Yet, Althusser’s theory on metaphor and theory is only a beginning to understanding the relationship between space and writing. Thus, Dobrin explains Derrida and de Man’s positions on metaphors in which outside of metaphor is more metaphor, and asserts that “there is no linguistic, discursive, rhetorical, grammatical theory outside of metaphor; there can be no theory outside of metaphor” (35).  Hence, while he identifies the limits of metaphor and critiques the deployment of spatial metaphors in composition studies, he also agrees that it would be frivolous to dismiss metaphoric spatiality in the field. What he desires to work through is an approach to a “more-than-metaphor” in considering the “spatial properties of writing” (36).

At this point, I was curious as to what he meant by “spatial properties of writing.”  At first, I thought of a black alphabetic letter (letter “a”) inhabiting the white space of the page, filling “negative” space of the page, disrupting the potential of a consistency amidst the space of the page, working against and with the ideology of the space of the page (of course, Sid may slap me upside the head here for thinking about ideology), and transforming the space of the page.  I then began to consider when a word formed (the word “alphabet”), intensifying inhabitation, disruption and transformation. And, of course, when words formed (“alphabetic letter”) and how it continues to inhabit, disrupt and transform the space of the page as I string words along.  Yet, I’m still restricted by boundaries (the horizontal space between one line and another, the vertical space between the end of a line and the end of the page).  But I assume these boundaries are fixed (yes, I can change though the line spacing and margins), and this is the point, I think, Sid is trying to make: those boundaries are NOT fixed; we assume they are, but we have to disrupt the boundaries.

Sid continues with identifying the difference between space and place, with the latter being a moment of inscription, of a function of writing.  After exploring the philosophical inquires of space historically, he concludes that “definitions within space, are formulated through occupation” (39).  And it is during occupation, and when space becomes place, that meanings are produced.  “The moment of possibility exists in the moment prior to space becoming place, the moment before arrangement and meaning . . . this moment in space, the moment prior to order and arrangement, emerges from the edge of chaos. This is where writing—not text, but writing—occurs. We write in that space and at that time” (40).  Ultimately, he contends, and I concur, that space, as well as occupation, is political, not simply social. “all occupations are political; all considerations of the spatial must account for the political. All occupations are discursive, rhetorical, hegemonic. Through its occupations, space is not merely social; it is political” (43).

“space, then, is ambiguous in that it is freedom; it may be bordered or identified by means of places within its borders, but space is unstable, uncertain because of the possibilities it contains for occupation. Space is yet-to-be written. It is potential; it is imagination; it is the possibility and means of every discourse to disrupt every discourse, to disrupt its own discourse” (41).

After theorizing space, place and occupation, Dobrin brings the conversation back to the field of composition.  As most scholars focus on establishing composition studies historically, again evidence of literature and literary studies influence in temporally conceptualizing its definition, scholars submit (my wording) to the bureaucracy that will eventually homogenize (my wording) the field.  It is composition studies’ neglect of its own occupation ― its focus in FYW courses, writing programs and subject formation/administration ― that has rendered instability of itself.  If the field so desires to continue to exist, it needs to move beyond the (artificial) safety it currently occupies.

“Composition studies is in need of spatial disruption” (56).

Interesting remarks with posthumanism (I haven’t formulated thoughts on them yet, partially because of my ignorance of Posthumanism and Posthuman):

I like this quote: “If there is, as Sánchez claims, too much writing, it is because the technologies of storage and circulation have exceeded the possibilities of production. Production has taken a backseat to circulation and storage. It is not that there is more space in which to store writing; it is that writing moves (or flows) in more efficient ways . . . Circulation, particularly in a new-media, computer-mediated enhanced system of circulation, shifts the focus of writing away from the producer of writing to the writing itself and the systems in which it circulates. Such a move allows us to sidestep the disciplinary trap of subject, allows us to begin to theorize writing neither as process nor product but as occupying circulating spaces within space” (57-58).  And Sid continues with his larger argument about subjects: “Without subject, we assume (perhaps incorrectly), writing cannot be produced, distributed, circulated, or consumed” (60).

And another quote: “The technology is the subject; the subject is the technology. Given composition studies’ focus on student writing-subjects and that those subjects are inseparable from technology—for composition students embroiled in the culture of corporate America, this is easily identifiable in the pervasiveness of wearable and integrated information technology devices—we can no longer address writing-subjects, student or other, —as subjects but instead must begin to consider the posthuman position (or at minimum transhuman). Such a shift, then, demands a realignment of focus not upon the individual as producer/originator of writing but upon the complex systems in which the posthuman is located, endlessly bound in the fluidity and shiftiness of writing” (72-73).

“we must first acknowledge that the primacy of the student subject in composition studies results not from a genuine disciplinary interest in students as subjects, in students as writers, or even in subjects in general but grows from the simple fact that subjects are the primary capital of composition studies” (74).  “composition studies’ adherence to economic models have forced the field to value academic pursuits—those that deal in the capital of the institution, the students—over intellectual pursuits that often ignore the confine of capital in favor of the movement of speculation and possibility. Of course, I should also note that composition studies’ adherence to economic models is less a composition studies problem per se than it is a condition of higher education in general” (75).

“The act of writing, for instance, is inherently an act of resistance; it does not require a subject; it does not need an identifiable outlet of transfer to the subject from the text. Disruption is inherent in the mechanism of writing (see Žižek; Badiou; Derrida); it is not the intent of the subject. Writing resists. Ultimately, though, the thing that probably matters least in understanding writing is understanding subjects. To be clear: this is not a claim that there are no subjects, that subjects do not matter, or that subjects do not affect what we know about writing. This is simply the claim that in order to develop more accurate ways of describing what writing is and what it does, the subject must be removed not just from the center of the stage but from the theater and perhaps the entire theater district” (76).  “seeing writing not as the product (or process) of a producing subject but as a never-ending (re)circulation in which larger producing/desiring machines generate and perpetuate writing throughout network, system, and environment” (77).  “What is more interesting/useful in studying writing is not the agency of the subject or even of the writing-subject but the agency of writing itself, be it identifiable agency of specific texts, the recurring agency of writing in multiple, networked formations, or the intellectual agency of a concept, idea, or theory” (78).  “Agency—what we have traditionally thought of as the power of subjectivity—moves free of the subject, gaining occupancy in space through circulation and through appropriation, remix, and recirculation. No longer does agency remain with individual agents; instead, it travels, shifts, and evolves through the circulation of writing. Agency gains power not in individual nodes or conductors within the circulatory network but through its movement/velocity in network space, what Ridolfo has called “flows of information.” (I take up “flow” and “information” in later chapters.)” (79-80).

“if humans have always been enmeshed with their technologies, as Hansen and Clark suggest, then we can say that humans have always been cyborg, hybrid, or posthuman. The degree to which humans become posthuman comes into question depending upon the level of technology and the scale of integration. This begs the question as to whether the technological interaction can be thought of as inherently part of the human or inherently what makes the human always already posthuman” (86).

Systemic reactions.  Three points: (1) Intellectual reaction- theory/thinking from which technology emerges.  (2) cooperate/material reaction- “the extraction of resources to make expressions of the technology, the production of any material demonstration of the technology, the distribution/circulation of the technology intellectually or materially, the consumption of the technology and the material representations of the technology, and the disposal of the technology and its material mechanisms” (89).  (3) energy reaction- “evolves from the agency the technology attains and its ability to sustain, reinscribe, and spread its agency—its rhetorical velocity. The energy reaction is political; it is not inseparable from the intellectual or the corporate. The energy reaction results not from the ubiquity of a technology but from its invisibility, its ability to naturalize itself as not-technology” (89).

I do wonder how Dobrin would account for new discoveries in the sciences.  In several moments, he uses physics, such as two objects cannot occupy one space at the same time and create a place, to support how he conceptualizes space.  Yet, what about possibilities when physics is turned on its head?  For example, quantum physics, which proposes that an object can be in two places at the same time.  How does writing spaces and places change here?

I plan to play today with a Greimasian square (complements of Phil Wegner) to try to understand better the potentiality that Dobrin desires composition studies to move toward.

Dobrin, Sidney I. Postcomposition. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011.

Sánchez, Raúl. “Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity.” College English 74.3 (2012): 234-246.

Barthes' The Photographic Message

In Roland Barthes’ first chapter “The Photographic Message” in Image Music Text, Barthes seeks to move beyond what sociology has primarily been focused on with photographs, the source of emission (producer) and point of reception (consumer), by  directing our attention to the channel of transmission (the text).  He is interested in the connotative messages images have, especially in the press photograph as such an image is accompanied by a title, caption and article (as well as headlines). Barthes quickly identifies that the newspaper, as a source of information, creates two different structures ― linguistic in which the substance is words and visual/image in which the substance is lines, shades, surfaces ― and that we must analyze both separately in order to understand how each structure compliments the other. The visual/image though is not an isolated structure; rather, such a text is accompanied by a title, caption and article.  But, as Barthes suggests, producers, those sources of emissions (i.e. staff of the newspaper: technicians who took the photo, others who choose, compose and treat it, and those who give a caption, title, and commentary), of the photograph often work to be “neutral” and “objective” in copying reality.  A basic level of meaning, “message without a code,” is evoked in the literal reality (although still manipulated by reductions in proportions, perspective, color, etc.). The “neutrality” intention creates sense of naturalness and eternalness, which will connect and be important for the next layer of meanings. As Barthes continues to the other levels of meanings ― “analogical reproductions of reality (drawings, paintings, cinema, theater) and, more importantly, reception of the image, which in turn signifies a certain ‘culture’ of the society receiving the message (17) ― he begins to explore rhetoric, or the rhetorical dimensions of a text.  A connoted system develops and “the code of the connoted system is very likely constituted either by a universal symbolic order or by a period rhetoric, in short by a stock of stereotypes (schemes, colours, graphisms, gestures, expressions, arrangements of elements)” (18). My first question was what rhetoric means for him. Is it simply a compilation of stereotypes?  A few paragraphs later, in arguing that the status of the photograph has more than a denotation, he suggests that the connotation provides a message with “a code (the ‘art’, or the treatment, or the ‘writing’, or the rhetoric, of the photograph).”  In other words, I gather that rhetoric means a code, or the connotation, that deploys messages that are both “’objective’ and ‘invested’, natural and cultural” (20).

These messages are structured by procedures, which are not part of the photographic structure, and Barthes suggests six of them: trick effects, pose, objects, photogenia, aestheticism and syntax.  Barthes is concerned with the first three, as “connotation is produced by a modification of the reality itself” (21).  In a trick effect procedure, the connotation appears without warning, similar to what I thought of as subverting the denotation, because of the particular historical moment.  The trick effect procedure is done by the producer’s intent, and typically works as the beginning step in naturalizing meanings.  The pose procedure is the content’s pose: the photo subject’s body position and parts position.  Barthes provides an example of JFK, in which he has his eyes raised heavenwards, hands clasped in a high-profile shot.  Barthes suggests “youthfulness, spirituality, purity” (22), although he doesn’t interrogate the image much.  I would have liked to see Barthes unpack the image more, but that isn’t particularly his focus for the chapter (but this is the reason why I think he shouldn’t even bring in a specific text if he isn’t going to unpack).  His next procedure directs our attention to objects and Barthes emphasizes that objects possess meaning and not power. This procedure is particularly interesting for me and my indep. study in the fall with Dr. Gries.  While Barthes wants to focus on objects and their meanings, and I concur with him, I also think power cannot be detached from meaning.  Meanings produce power, as well as eradicate power (I know I need to elaborate).

The object procedure also reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Kyle today about consciousness and writing.  It was an interesting conversation and I won’t delve into all the details, but he did mention something that relates to Barthes’ third procedure (objects) in connation in images: memory.  Kyle mentioned that we have to write memories in order to produce memories and objects provide us with a sense of memory.  I brought up the idea of objects possessing a memory in that we project consciousness onto objects and give them a sense of consciousness.  Kyle fair warned me though that this may be problematic, and I agree, but I want to clarify what I (think I) mean: a subject’s experience with an object, often and almost always, evokes many different ideas, feelings, and narratives.  The time a subject and object are together will provide numerous opportunities to develop a narrative (which can easily be fantasy or real).  It will also give a subject a consciousness (I know I’m throwing the word “consciousness” around without any solid definition, which was also the issue Kyle and I were discussing), as well as the object, although a different kind of, consciousness.  For example, a painting on my living room has particular meanings for me.  My friend Sandy painted it and offered it to me at a particular moment in our lives. At the time of exchange, I had a consciousness and set of meanings (friendship, gratitude, value of listening), which all held shortly after (a couple of months).  When she and I were no longer around each other and the painting, I continued to have these particular ideas. These ideas structure a memory. But did I have the ideas and memory or did the painting have the ideas and memory?  Sure, I could think about Sandy and some of those ideas and the memory arose, but the ideas and meanings were never as potent in my mind as they were when I looked at the painting.  In addition, I think the objects absorbed meanings and develop a memory that was distinct. I’m unsure right now what the object’s memory would be (i.e. would it be synonymous with my memory). As the months passed, (as you might have noticed already by the past tense) the meanings changed for me, as well as (I’m assuming) for the painting. 

Now, let’s say the painting gets damaged, maybe it falls off the wall, the glass breaks and the painting nearly tears in two, and I have to throw it away.  I dispose of it in the dumpster in my parking lot and someone else finds the painting.  They decide to keep it, maybe restore it or whatever, because it evokes certain meanings for this person.  Maybe the image evokes from their memory sadness or joy or tranquility.  Now does the object’s consciousness change?  Does the subject pack the object with new meanings and a new memory? I would say yes because the context changed.  The environment of the exchange with me and Sandy, the traveling from Chicago to Gainesville, and my living room in Florida all packed the painting. The breaking of the glass, the tearing of the painting, and the travel of the painting to the dumpster packed a new set of meanings (no value or reason in keeping or restoring the painting, my lack of effective hanging, etc.). At the same time, the painting’s position in the dumpster has a set of meanings for why it ended up in the dumpster.  But those meanings and memories seem to be lost with interjection of the other person and the painting absorbs new meanings and memories. Of course, if you’ve reached this point in my writing, my whole babble here is nearly meaningless without a definition of consciousness and memory.  Is consciousness defined by memory?  I have always thought of consciousness as the ability to make meanings, as well as a self awareness (which I know is loaded).  Possibly I need to rethink what consciousness is with attention to memory.  And maybe a definition of consciousness is impossible as meanings are constantly fluid and shifting (as definitions for words also do). And of course, I haven’t even discussed how writing connects to this memory and object example, but I would like to explore further some of these ideas.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about visual rhetoric as it relates to multimodal composing, particularly in the classroom. It would be impractical, as far as I know now, to have students compose a visual essay, such as a 10 minute documentary.  I cannot expect students to have the necessary access to a video camera (although they probably have video cameras on their phone) and an editing program.  However, in 1102 last semester, we had students do visual maps, where they had to design a visual representation of their research sources.  The idea was to have students demonstrate the complexity of weaving together sources, as well as aid students in organizing their papers. I thought it was an interesting assignment.  As a way for students to begin thinking visually about their research and their research paper, on one my lectures days, I showed the video on Ken Robinson’s paper on “Changing Education Paradigms” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).  After the ten minute video, I busted out colored pencils and sheets of paper and asked students, with their five annotations from their annotated bibliography, to represent visually the conversation of their sources, as well as their own position around their topic.  Students seemed to really enjoy the activity and many mentioned it gave them a different way of thinking about their topic and argument. I wonder if we (teachers) had spent some more time in discussing visual rhetoric, specifically production and invention, would students be able to create a much different argument in the end  A nascent idea, but something I wish to explore more in the next couple of weeks.    

Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Print.

Raul Sanchez "Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity"

I had a chance to read Raul Sanchez’ “Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity” the other day and want to summarize some of his ideas, as well as discuss my conversation with my friend Jake.  Sanchez posits that composition studies has traditionally differentiated between the writer and the subject ― “the latter remains a figure with which to theorize systematically, while the former is encounterd materially and individually” (234) ― with the field focusing on the former.  But he argues that, because of “recent and emerging technologies” (234), the distinction is withering.  Theories of the subject, particularly in the 1980s and 90s, positioned the subject as an abstract phenomenon: “agents, texts, and contexts are interconnected” as Sanchez remarks “and are all, in fact, participants in thoroughgoing textuality” (235).  But new technologies (I would imagine he means new media writing apparatuses, although he alludes to “nodes,” “networks,” and “clouds”) have engendered the discourse of the subject to become a materiality, one in which Sanchez hopes can be susceptible to empirical research and pedagogy.  Such a reconfiguring, or rather retheorizing, of the discourse of the subject will provide composition studies with a writing-subject figure, as well as a way to explore a “complex relationship between agency and textuality” (235).  This retheorizing also redefines identity, which Sanchez argues, “names an aspect of the idea of traffic between textuality and the ‘outside’ of texuality, the aspect with which composition studies historically is most concerned: agency” (235).

Sanchez believes that composition studies’ deployment of modernist and postmodernist frameworks are necessary and useful in understanding the writer and writing, but also posits that these frameworks need to extend further in terms of developing a writer-subject and the study of writing.  These two texts (I’m calling them texts) can be explored by appropriating empiricism. Since we already “look at texts ― graphic, filmic, electronic, or otherwise ― in systematic ways,” (238) as Sanchez contends, and hence we engage with empirical methods through which to understand the inside and outside of texts, resistance to empiricism is unproductive. Rather, a redeployment of empiricism in composition studies (or writing studies, as Sanchez highlights, which is where comp. studies is headed) will be fruitful Sanchez also identifies the opposition, likely from a postmodernist, to his argument: reimagining empiricism as the “old and familiar idea of strategic essentialism” (238). But Sanchez seeks ways to understand the systems that give texts the function of representations. It is here where I feel Sanchez is calling for a reenvisioning of structuralism, as he sees identity as an “event” of and in textuality (Raul might be frowning now as I’m attempting to cast his theory into a category). 

Sanchez also argues for what he calls neo-empirical theory: the act of writing, which is an “identity-based cultural activity” (240), produces identity as a rhetorical act (rather than a philosophical concept) (240). This theory, as Sanchez says Satya Mohanty articulates, suggests that experience ― as a way to process information, rather than an ontology ― is “mutable or plastic.” 

Sanchez’ theory does appear to contrast with Barthes’ theoretical concept signifiance, a term that suggests the subject is positioned as a “loss”, a “disappearance” (in other words, is deconstructed) during production, enunciation, symbolization (and in our case, writing) (Stephen Heath’s Note, 10). Of course, Barthes connects this moment of deconstruct to jouissance (an English translation is difficult because of the range of meaning in jouissance), but what’s interesting is that while both Sanchez and Barthes see identity and the act of writing as a process, each scholar differs in the content of the subject in the process: the former scholar does not suggest a sense of “loss” in the subject or act of writing, but (I believe) implies that a production produces identity ; the latter scholar suggests that in the act of writing, or speech, or language production, the subject is subjected to a deconstruction, a “loss.”  I’d like to think more about both these scholars' positions and as I will read Barthes in the next couple of days, I plan to return to some of these ideas in another post.

Identity, as Sanchez argues, “is a function of social and historical relations and interactions; it is not an epistemological or ontological concept.  It is a rhetorical action-an event” (241). Shortly after this claim, Sanchez brings his argument back to emerging technologies.  Such apparatuses offer events, and, as Sanchez remarks, an event or “eventiness” may be better understood “as a function, one that can emerge at once within and as the discourse of identity: at the level of bodies, whether utterly material or thoroughly discursive” (243), I conceptualized an event as a process, but also wondered where the particular moments in which events materialize are.  Sanchez suggests that events take place in the act of writing; and that this act of writing is identity.  In other words, Sanchez’ theoretical position is that identity and acts of writing are both events, which would complicate simplistic notions of experience as constructions of identity or objectivistic, or essentialist, approaches to identity.

I’ve summarized and cited much of Sanchez’ article for the purposes of my own understanding. I think Raul’s article will fit nicely with Sid’s Writing Technologies course in the fall.  I’d possibly like to explore more of the writing-subject (or, as Raul articulates in the end of his article, writingsubject), in particular with a certain technological apparatus.  Ultimately, Sanchez seeks a new methodology in considering what happens in the act of writing in relationship to technology, and so I’d like to work with this methodology and see what arises.  

Jake and I also spoke a couple of days ago about the piece and I wish I had written more notes, but here are some basic ideas.  Jake highlighted the point that Raul was saying that postmodernism and postmodernists are still caught in epistemological concepts.  Jake also underscored a key line from the piece, “Rather than retheorize the question, postmodern composition theory simply set it [the writer] aside on the grounds that it was too ideologically loaded with bad epistemological assumptions” (242). Hence, the reason why Raul encourages scholars to consider the limitations of postmodernism and move beyond its theoretical framework.

Jake also highlighted Raul’s primarily interest is in agency.  Early in the piece, Raul remarks, “More than ever, the study of writing needs a working and timely theory of writing, of which a crucial component would be a newly theorized writing-subject.  This theory of writing would try to explain how texts are made, distributed, received, and redistributed in contemporary systems” (236). When Jake brought up the point that Raul may be attempting to identify an agency outside of the text (or maybe I misunderstood Jake), I think Raul, and other scholars, would hit a wall and develop a flawed position.  Agency outside of a text would mean that the agent exists outside the text and any historical and spatial moment. But cultural, economic and political factors always constitute agents and agency, as texts move with, against, work off, destroy, produce, and transform each other and evoke and disseminate meanings. The only kind of agency that would exist outside a text would have to be a God-figure or some kind of omnipotence.  Yet, I still conceive of texts as symbiotic. I know Raul wants to move away from epistemological and ontological concepts, but I’m not sure one could propose an agency outside a text without some considerations of these philosophical branches. In other words, Derrida’s famous remark, “there is nothing outside the text” continues to ring true. (Btw, it is quite possible that Raul is NOT trying to identify an agency outside the text; in fact, I think, and Raul alludes several times, he concurs with Derrida’s idea of texts and the “outside.” Jake and I, or maybe just I, may be completely wrong in reading Raul’s argument).

I wonder though if Raul is trying to articulate an agency more along the lines of invention, but invention in the sense of an inconceivable agency now, but materialized in the process in the future. Just a last thought.  

Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Print.

Sánchez, Raúl. “Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity.” College English 74.3 (2012): 234-246.

First set of readings for Independent Study: Spencer and Nietzsche

While I would love to read more chapters in A Thousand Plateaus, I need to begin my summer independent study. I do plan to return to D&G, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks.Friends of mine are continuing with A Thousand Plateaus and having virtual meetings, and I hope I can join them, but for now, my blogs will focus on my study.

As part of my indep. study, I am taking on several excerpts from The Rhetorical Tradition.This book is massive, dating back to Gorgias and the Sophists (circa 480 BCE), and I do not intend, at least for this indep. study, on reading the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance or Enlightenment texts. I have read some scholars ― Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Locke and Hume ― before, but I plan to focus on a couple nineteenth century pieces (Spencer and Nietzsche) and several Modern and Postmodern texts (Bakhtin, Burke, Perelman, Foucault, Derrida, Gates, and Fish).

Herbert Spencer remarks, “A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed.Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived” (1155).

Herbert Spencer’s “The Philosophy of Style” is a basic nineteenth-century theory on economy writing.Spencer, ultimately, argues for some essential principles ― ones that I see Joseph Williams argues for in Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace ― that one ought to deploy for direct, clear writing.Spencer posits that “childhood” words rather than “adult” words (e.g. ‘have’ rather than ‘possess’, ‘wish’ rather than ‘desire’,et al.), words with one or two syllables, concrete terms rather than abstract ones, and main ideas (for the most part) should always come first in a sentence (subject à predicate) and constitute clear writing.This style of writing, as Spencer argues, is needed as the system of literature and composition becomes more complex. And this is where Spencer’s paradigms structure his argument. Spencer, as a promoter of social Darwinism, believed that the main principle of evolution ― homogeneity to heterogeneity ― exists in all systems (physics, arts, et al.).As these systems develop further and become much more complex, individuals are able to specialize or be specialized, yet also rely on more and more on the system for their existence.

But, more importantly socially, “The Philosophy of Style” and Spencer’s historical moment was undoubtedly a time of an oppressive racial society.Binary oppositions were ubiquitous, and Spencer’s discourse illuminates such ideologies.He suggests that savages/uncultivated peoples use an indirect method in their colloquial expressions (e.g. “Water, give me”).He remarks that, “the fact that the indirect mode is called the natural one, implies that it is the one spontaneously employed by the common people ― the one easiest for undisciplined minds” (1162-1163). Spencer’s discourse here engenders a hierarchical language use that sustains class and racial divisions, as well as resonates with the civilizing mission: a way for the bourgeoisie to exercise cultural, as well as economic and political, hegemony. Of course, I understand that Spencer is a product of nineteenth century empiricism, but, even outside politics (although I do understand that we cannot ever step outside politics), Spencer’s discourse is problematic in assuming an essentialist, and naturalist, idea about language use. All dimensions of language use, even those much more apparently fixed, for example grammar, as Chomsky contended as a hard-wired, universal aspect of language, may appear to be inherent in usage. But this would assume that language isn’t cultural. However, at times, I wonder if language as strictly cultural holds true: the classic example is the word mom.In various languages, the signifier and signified for “mom” has a similar phonetic: the “mmm” sound.Yet, while a vast number of languages have close phonetics with “mom,” several languages do not have the “mmm” sound. How can we rest on the idea that language is inherent in an individual?

My next reading was Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” from Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s.I’ve always found Nietzsche fascinating, not just in his writing style and rhetorical approach with aphorisms, poetry and metaphors, but in his ideas.He begins this essay by considering why “the proudest of men, the philosopher” uses “the intellect mainly for dissimulation”(1172). But Nietzsche quickly shifts the direction of what man desires, suggesting that man (humans) wants “to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes [war of each against all]” (1172).And, furthermore, Nietzsche directs our attention, and connects these previous two ideas, to how man typically attempts to use words to articulate truth. Nietzsche argues though for the arbitrariness of language (e.g. trees as masculine and the plant as feminine, a snake behaves similarly to a worm, et al.) and that truth is a “movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropolmorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified,, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding” (1174). In analyzing Socrates/Plato’s claim that words/sounds have a natural, inherent connection to the things they signify, Nietzsche unveils the shortcomings of this idealist position and proposes the arbitrariness of language.In addition, words engender concepts that fit to the situation and relate to and within the rhetorical context, as well as things outside the rhetorical context.Nietzsche remarks, “Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to server as reminder of the unique . . . experience . . . but rather . . . as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases . . . Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things” (1174).

Most post-structuralists have deployed Nietzsche’s framework, and thus language as arbitrary, words as signifiers, speech as fragmented is common understanding for those academics in the liberal arts and humanities.Ultimately, Nietzsche sees philosophy as inseparable from language, and, more importantly for my study, all language as rhetoric. For philosophy to seek truth beyond language is impossible and unfruitful. To consider language as literal is impossible.For Nietzsche, both truth and lies are conventions of discourse, meaning that since there is no way to transform things directly into language, we project our impressions onto the thing and in return attempt to articulate our impression. Consequently, all things become metaphors, and “truth” becomes a rhetoric by humans creativity in language.

One quote that I think will be valuable in my studies of visual rhetoric is when Nietzsche remarks, “the concept ― which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die ― is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept” (1175).The translator’s footnote remarks, “i.e. concepts are derived from images, which are, in turn, derived from nerve stimuli” (1175).What I’m interested in is how nations and communities develop their narratives, which are complied of numerous concepts, as well as consciousness via visual and material artifacts. In other words, I want to take Nietzsche two steps further: nerve stimuli àimages (as well as words) àconcepts à narratives à consciousness.Obviously, this outline is a very nascent understanding of the connections between a subject/text and text, but if concepts are the remnants of images and words/metaphors, then narratives would possibly all be allegory (the residue of multiple metaphors); yet, what happens to my outline with consciousness?Would consciousness have multilayered allegories? What does that even mean?And, finally, how does this brief outline I’ve developed here connect to the nation or community?

I’m also interested in how Nietzsche connects to Roland Barthes.I plan to read Image Music Text next, and I know, as the title suggests, that Barthes discusses the production of meanings in photographs/images and music.Nietzsche suggests that empty space and empty time provide an empty metaphor, which produces every concept.We begin with space, time and causality.Then, an act of transference into images creates the matter. Next, “the qualities which we believe in” are created.In this last “step” or transference, Barthes’argument about mythologies appears to resonate.

Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print.