- “The first, and perhaps most obvious, way is to define visual rhetoric as a product…that names a category of rhetorical discourse that relies on something other than words or text for the construction of its meaning…But there are at least two problems with defining visual rhetoric as product. First, such a definition implies that there are substantial differences between ‘word’ and ‘not-word.’... In addition, the construction of a category or genre of visual rhetoric has the perhaps unintended consequence of reinforcing the subordinate status of visuality in the contexts of rhetorical culture. That is, visual rhetoric is destined always to be visual rhetoric, whereas verbal rhetoric, or textuality, gets to be just rhetoric” (198)
- Second, we can see “visual rhetoric as a mode of inquiry, defined as a critical and theoretical orientation that makes issues of visuality relevant to rhetorical theory. As a mode of inquiry, the visual rhetoric project would urge us to explore our understandings of visual culture in light of the questions of rhetorical theory, and at the same time encourage us to (re)consider aspects of rhetorical theory in light of the persistent problem of the image” (198)
She argues that we should think of visual rhetoric in both ways by analyzing both the history of rhetorical events and the rhetorical study of historical events. She states that “doing rhetorical history of the visual must entail both the third and fourth senses of rhetorical history; neither is sufficient alone. Taken together, they enable the rhetorical historian to pay attention to each of three distinct but equally important moments in the life of photographs—production, reproduction, and circulation. Production must be accounted for if we are to know where images come from (literally) and why they appear in the spaces where we find them. Reproduction acknowledges that images are hybrid entities, that we do not encounter them in isolation, and that their arrangement (at least in the spaces of print culture) is al- ways the result of particular editorial choices and framing of ideas. Circulation must be accounted for as well, for—as Walter Benjamin reminded us long ago—it is the fundamental property of photography” (200)
Key Terms
- Ekphrasis: “to literally make the audience see through his eyes” (196)
- History of rhetorical events methodology: “discourse is studied ‘as a force in history,’ as a part of the history of a culture, or as a microcosm for history itself…Using such an approach, a critic might study the history of terms relevant to particular instances of rhetorical discourse, attempt to uncover the history of the production of a text, or look for patterns in discourse that ‘suggest a rhetorical trajectory’” (200)
- Rhetorical study of historical events methodology: “one uses the critical tools cultivated by one’s rhetorical sensibility to under- stand history itself, conceiving of people, events, and situations as rhetorical problems for which responses must continually be formulated, reformulated, and negotiated” (200)