Technologies of Wonder: (Re)Mediating Rhetorical
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TECHNOLOGIES OF WONDER: (RE)MEDIATING RHETORICAL PRACTICE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Susan Heckman Delagrange, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Professor Nan Johnson, Adviser Approved By: Professor Scott Lloyd DeWitt __________________________ Professor James A. Fredal Adviser English Graduate Program Professor H. Lewis Ulman ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the implications for embodied rhetorical practice in the visually saturated and spatially diverse landscapes of digital media, and proposes theoretical justifications and pedagogical strategies for teaching situated rhetoric in a technologically rich environment. Re-mediating writing—moving into electronic writing spaces and devising innovative verbal and visual forms—can better acknowledge racial, social, cultural, economic, and gendered difference through the recuperation of the visual as a valued form of argument. But as academic pedagogical performances shift from print to screen, old practices and values are too easily mapped onto new media, and these practices and values are usually those of dominant political and social groups and institutions. Print models for academic argument based on disembodied Cartesian rationality have long guided form and content in students’ essays and researchers’ books and journal articles. Using images, or using emotional rather than rational or ethical appeals, is dismissed as deceptive and inappropriate. Yet some arguments can best be made using images, sounds, or other sensory modes that frankly recognize the material effects of rhetoric, and often these arguments most benefit people whose voices are not heard and bodies not seen in conventional discursive forums. Furthermore, mobile, non-linear arrangements in hypermedia favor the polyvocality ii and multiple perspectives made visible by the situated knowledges of feminist postmodernism, and lead to argument through similarity and affinity rather than the either/or of linear print. Identifying ways in which dominant discourses are interwoven with the technology of print culture unravels the webs of knowledge and power that bind the social technologies of print, and thereby reveals alternative rhetorics and ways of writing in new media. Reframing embodied argument in new media cannot occur unless we become active producers rather than mere consumers of visual texts. Doing less forfeits the right to speak in a multi-mediated world which increasingly re-inscribes traditional, hierarchical, disembodied forms and standards on digital information. As designers, we challenge the myth of transparency that claims the best media are windows through which we perceive “the truth,” and demonstrate that the most ethical use of new media is as reflective, responsive technologies of wonder. iii For George, Nan, and Mom and Dad iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first thanks must go to Nan Johnson who, with wit and wisdom, has so ably and generously filled the roles of adviser, mentor, colleague and friend. Thanks also to my committee members Scott DeWitt, James Fredal and H. Lewis Ulman; their unflagging interest and provocative questions, comments, and e-mail messages helped me become a more thoughtful scholar. I owe much to Barbara McGovern and JF Buckley, who encouraged me over countless conversations and cups of coffee, and to Anne Wysocki, who showed me it was fitting to think in images. I am also indebted to my comrades-in-rhetoric Ben McCorkle, Rebecca Dingo, and Melissa Ianetta; they provided friendship and humor and good sense at all the right moments. And finally, but never finally, my gratitude to George, Morgan, and Christopher Delagrange is on-going and incalculable; they nourish my writing and my life. v VITA June 10, 1946 ………………………… Born—Los Angeles, California 1966 ………………………………….. B.A. English, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 1972 ………………………………….. M.A. English, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………iv Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………….v Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………vi List of Figures………………………………………………………………………….ix Chapters: 1. Image ! Link ! Word ………………………………………………………1 Digital and Visual Remediation ………………………………………………7 In Our Best Interests …………………………………………………………12 Feminist Epistemology ………………………………………………………18 2. Remediation and (re)Vision …………………………………………………34 Remediation …………………………………………………………………38 Academic Remediation and the Web ……………………………………….45 Technê ………………………………………………………………………51 Seeing ………………………………………………………………………55 The Persistence of Vision ……………………………………………………59 Seeing Bodies ……………………………………………………………….64 Seeing Bodies in Space ………………………………………………………70 Designing Women ……………………………………………………………79 3. Embodiment by Design: Beyond Image/Text ………………………………82 Technological Dreams ………………………………………………………84 Dream Anatomy …………………………………………………………….90 Chironomia …………………………………………………………………97 vii Women Teaching Women’s Rights ……………………………………….100 Hysterical Bodies ………………………………………………………….106 (in)Visible Woman …………………………………………………………109 Technologies of the Body …………………………………………………115 Remediation and Re-Inscription ……………………………………………120 Envisioning Information: Edward Tufte ……………………………………126 Design for Non-Designers: Robin Williams ………………………………130 “Hey, Good Looking!” ………………………………………………………133 4. Thinking About Linking, and Other Models and Mechanisms for Visual Arrangement of Evidence ………………………………………140 The Canon of Arrangement …………………………………………………144 Hypermedia and Postmodernism ……………………………………………152 Efficiency and Usability ……………………………………………………158 Putting Icing on Stale Cake: Handbooks and Guides for Web Design ……161 [Click] ………………………………………………………………………166 A Feminist (re)Arrangement ………………………………………………173 Wunderkammer as Object-to-Think-With …………………………………179 Visual Analogy …………………………………………………………….185 Difficulty, Aporia and Cognitive Engagement ……………………………188 5. Embodying Theory: Maps, Media Machines, and Other Devices of Wonder …………………………………………………………………197 Visual Alchemy ……………………………………………………………209 Making Maps ……………………………………………………………….216 Afterimage …………………………………………………………………………232 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………238 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Cheryl Ball, six prospective web designs, July 2003 …………………………3 2 LEFT: Francis Grice, daguerreotype of unidentified man and woman, c.1855. Daguerreotype Collection, Library of Congress <http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?dag:9:./temp/~ammem_5aZQ::>; RIGHT: Brayton J. Wilcox, Rep. Wm. Hough and family, c.1852-53, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution <http://www.npg.si.edu/ img2/1846/6910068a.jpg> ……………………………………………………40 3 LEFT: Tchin-Chao, The Chinese Conjurer, George Méliès, 1904, Getty Museum, Devices of Wonder, ©2001, J. Paul Getty Trust. All Rights Reserved. <http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices /flash/>; RIGHT, Stephen Sondheim, production of A Little Night Music ……………40 4 Screen Capture, www.cnn.com, March 23, 2004 ……………………………41 5 LEFT: Toviyah Kats, from Ma’a’seh Toviyah, Venice, 1708, National Library of Medicine < http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/ da_g_I-A-2-07.html>; RIGHT: Fritz Kahn, “Der Mensch als Industriepalas (Man as Industrial Palace),” Das Lebens des Menschen, Stuttgart, 1926, National Library of Medicine <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/ dreamanatomy/da_g_IV-A-01.html> ………………………………………73 ix 6 LEFT: Andreas Vesalius, “Prima Musculorum Tabula,” De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543; RIGHT: Andreas Vesalius, “Septima Musculorum Tabula,” De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543. <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ exhibition/ historicalanatomies/vesalius_home.html> ………………………………91 7 Charles Estienne, De Dissectione Partium Corporis Humani Libri Tres, Paris: Apud Simonem Colinaeum, 1545. <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/ historicalanatomies/Images/1200_pixels/Estienne_p275.jpg> ……………94 8 Albrecht Dürer, woodcut, man drawing nude woman using a Draughtsman’s Net perspective device, The Painter’s Manual, 1538. ………………………95 9 From Plates 4 and 9 of Gilbert Austin, Chironomia, London: Bulmer, 1806 ...97 10 From Plate 4 of Gilbert Austin, Chironomia, London: Bulmer, 1806. ………98 11 Pierre Janet, “Imitation de la danse,” Névroses et Idées Fixes, Paris: F. Alcan, 1898. ……………………………………………………………108 12 Henry Groskinsky, “Replaceable You,” in “Vision of Tomorrow,” LIFE, February 1989. ……………………………………………………………118 13 Kairos, bas relief by Lysippos, Museum of Torino, Italy. …………………148 14 Peter Ramus, Table of Divisions of Dialectic. Reprinted in Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Boston: Harvard UP, 1963. ………………………………………………………………………149 15 Nodes with link. ……………………………………………………………154 16 Colophon from Mark Bernstein, Chasing Our Tails, Eastgate, 1997. ……155 x 17 Typographer’s pages, in Anne Wysocki, “Monitoring Order: Visual Desire, the Organization of Web Pages, and Teaching the Rules of Design,” Kairos 3.2 (1998). ……………………………….………………………….163 18 Wunderkammer, double plate from Ferrante Imperato, Dell'Historia Naturale…. Naples: C. Vitale, 1599. ………………………………………181 19 Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Medici Princess), c.1948. Plate 29 in Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay Eterniday. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003. …..210 20 Joseph Cornell, Solomon Islands, 1940-42. Plate 18 in Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay Eterniday. New York: Thames & Hudson,