[reposting] Where does race come from and where is it taking us?

In order to really understand the idea of “race” as a literary construct would require that we understand first the historical context of its conception and the different usages that it has obtained throughout history. Henry Louis Gates Jr. attempts to break down the differences of the term and the various usages of the idea as well. He says that "western writers in French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and English have tried to mystify these rhetorical figures of race, to make them natural, absolute, essential. In doing so, they have inscribed these differences as fixed and finite categories which they merely report or draw upon for authority" (Gates 6). He goes on to explain a bit about how the creation and usage and perpetuation of this idea of "race" only really serve to alienate people from one another. This huge dichotomy is especially drawn between people of less fortune as seen in historical and contemporary examples. Gates explains that "takes little reflection, however, to recognize that these pseudoscientific categories are themselves figures. Who has seen a black or red person, a white, yellow, or brown? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality” (Gates 6).

[reposting] Race Manifested in Society

In Sue Hum’s essay, Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design, she opens her essay with a quote form Gunther Kress that not only provides a smooth entry into her theory of Design, but nicely summarizes it as well. Kress said that individuals “shape their interests through the design of messages with the resources available to them in specific situations (191).” In other words, people’s interests are unconsciously generated from images and messages that are created with available resources and their invisible dominant perceptual practices. However, Hum argues that a person’s dominant perceptual practices, as well as their cultural perceptual practices, may “influence and even limit the rhetorical purposes of images seeking to initiate social transformation (193).” Thus, why she advocates that the English studies needs “a theory of Design that better acknowledges the dominant perceptual habits that function to both constrain acts of choice-making and restrict the repertoire of available resources (192).”

[reposting] racialized gaze as reality

All three of these theorists have ideas that are grounded similarly yet take off in different directions. Cooper and Gates’s arguments seem to run most parallel out of the three. Cooper shows some strong-toned rhetoric at the beginning of her work, where you can almost see her anger bleed into her thesis. Gates, too, goes on a long-winded (but insightful and very necessary) elaboration on how racism is a “fiction” (4) and a “dangerous trope” (5). She spends several pages roasting racism to the point where any conceivable marginalization of anyone sounds not only under-evolved but completely dumb. Cooper would greatly add onto Gates’s argument in the way that Cooper claims that black people have not truly had a chance to contribute to humanity because they’ve been oppressed (383). Hum makes an interesting point as she elaborates on her term of racialized gaze as design. Racialized gaze is a perceptual habit, meaning a habitual way of looking at something. Racialized gaze as Design argues that design has been influenced because of these perceptual habits. She claims that racialized gaze as design makes it harder for artists to express what they mean to (193) because the audience’s perceptual habit keeps them from fully empathizing with the artist. My issue with this claim is that if the audience is so affected by racialized gaze, then the artist should too be heavily affected by it. Further elaborating on these ideas, the only African American influence we currently have is one that has been shaped by racialized gaze, regardless of whether or not this gaze is held by the audience or the artist. 

How Racialized Gaze Shapes Our Perception

It is often said that “race is a social construct” and Hum and Gates both support this argument by showing how throughout history the voices of black authors have been altered. In “Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design,” Hum draws attention to the fact that individuals make strategic choices in the design of their rhetoric based on a culture’s dominant perceptual practices. She writes that “when we speak of "the white race" or "the black race," "the Jewish race" or "the Aryan race," we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors.” (Hum 4) We, as individuals, rely on our racialized gaze as an available resource of design. Sometimes we use these resources subconsciously without even realizing it.

Most simply, Race and Design intersect at the corner of creation and perception. Hum crafted an article to discuss the ethical considerations we must make as content creators with regards to race.  Hum writes that designers must, “attend to  how  perceptual  habits,  such  as  the  racialized  gaze,  are  interwoven  with  their production of persuasive ensembles.” (Hum 192) More simply, as creators, we have a moral obligation to keep a very watchful eye on the perception of our audience. Some might argue that this suggests the power of the audience, as this indicates their ability to guide and direct the creativity of the content producer.

Inadvertent Alienation

Throughout history, there has been racial prejudice within literature. These depictions, in text and image, influenced thought and belief in Western culture continually. The alienation of different races severely affected how each culture was perceived within history.

 Each illustration, description, reference and stereotype shown to the public created or maintained a racial format, per say, for others to follow. Sometimes furthering these ideas were not even meant to be prejudice. Gates described how literature has altered the term "race" into something more than just appearance between  people. He claimed that "the relation between "racial character" and these sort of characteristics has been inscribed through tropes of race, lending the sanction of God, biology, or the natural order to even presumably unbiased descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences" (5). This suggested belief that their differences are completely naturally made, and not the work of years and years or stereotypes made by others furthers racism and the ignorance to itself in literature.

The Harmful Implications of Racialized Gaze

When addressing the existence of race in literature, we encompass what seems to be an extremely large portion of American literature. This is largely due to the existence of a racialized gaze amongst both the audience and the author of a text. No matter the intent of a writer or a piece of literature, the inclusion of race brings forth implicit assumptions about that race from the audience. Sue Hum addresses this process as “racialized gaze as design”, as these messages about race are created through the simple inclusion of other races. In other words, “no one approaches images with an innocent eye” (Hum 193).

Chicken vs The Egg/Design vs The Image

Both Hum and Gates reflect notions of postcolonial literary criticism in their respective essays. While Gates is heavily critical of antiquated ideas surrounding the colonial literature and how it pertains to the broad concept of race, Hum holds the indoctrinating process of Design to task due to its ability to self-perpetuate negative stereotypes, specifically in regards to race. Both of these theorists subscribe to postcolonialism as both their theories advocate for a certain change in the discourse. Hum argues that, if assessed properly, Design can “promote a socially tolerant and racially inclusive future” (Hum 208). Gates even reflects Hum’s notion of Design when he states that “the languages we employ to define [our] supposed differences not only reinforce each other but tend to create and maintain each other” (Gates 15). This is ostensibly an alternative articulation of Hum’s theory that “perceptual habits,” a term also used by Gates in his essay, “increase choice making processes” and establish somewhat of a cultural hegemony (Hum 193). Since both these theorists reflect several of the same themes, as well as place a lot of authority on perception and how it influences aspects of Design and development, I wish to bring them into conversation with one another in order to come to a conclusion as to whether the images we see influence, or design as Hum would put it, the way we interact and perceive the world or if the way we view the world based off of Design influences how we interpret images.

The "Dominant" Design: Why We Must Dismantle Universality

Critical Race Theory in the 21st century has many intersections and distinct voices that contribute to a nuanced conversation. Importantly, there is no single "dominant" leader who speaks for every experience. Thus, for congruence with this nuanced conversation, it seems most logical to highlight unique view points such as Sue Hum’s Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Writing “Race” and the Difference it Makes. From there one may synthesize how Hum and Gates as individuals together can offer very valuable experiences and knowledge sets to expand rhetorical theory and ideas of (re)presentation.

Race Writes History

Or at least, in this case, how modern society views the historical context that surround certain significant events in the past. Whether it was purposeful or not, history was written with a racial bias; this is especially relevant here in America, where we have a long past of shameful racial prejudices throughout the development of our nation. Ever since the Colonial days when white Western-Europeans came to already-inhabited America and claimed this land their own, it has become evident that these white European's fancied themselves as the dominant race. One of the most prime examples is the continued celebration of Christopher Columbus day; it is a holiday celebrating the exploratory spirit and the navigator, who while looking for a direct route to Asia from Europe, "discovered" the American continent. This is a very biased way of learning about the events that transpired; it is often vaguely described how there were already a native people in this land, and there had been for thousands of years. But the day that a white man accidentally landed upon its shores, it was "discovered", which has a positive connotation associated with it. It is common for educational systems in America to teach about the historical time period this way, but fail to see the events that transpired in the Native American context. Christopher Columbus and his men took advantage of the welcoming Natives, ravaged them of their resources, stripped them of their lands, and essentially began the genocide of the Native American population. So why only teach about one viewpoint? Because the white race, which has established itself as the dominant one within the racially constructed hegemonic American society, has been responsible for the "white-washing" of recorded history.

False Assumptions

   While reading Sue Hum’s “Behind the Eyes,” and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Writing Race and the Difference it makes,” I noticed that Gates address the history and reality of racial issues, and Hum discusses how and why race has come to influence society.  By putting these two authors and their works in conversation, we can unpack race and its constructs within literature and design.

           

Racialized Gaze As Old As Race: Understanding Author's Racialized Gaze

Hum and Gates expose the unspoken issues within hegemonic culture, where society is built from certain cultural thoughts and expectations from a dominating cultural group that undermines and excludes other groups to terrible extremes. Hum focuses on an artist from the dominant group in our hegemonic society who has taken the task upon himself to re-present what Gates calls "the Other (be that odd metaphorical negation of the European defined as African, Arabic, Chinese, Latin American, Yiddish, or female)"(2), in Hum's case study, Chinese immigrants. Gates also discusses the author from the dominant group who attempts to re-present "the Other" by creating "pseudoscientific categories"(6). "Western culture's use of writing as a commodity to confine and delimit a culture of color" is exactly how these categories are contrived or, at least, supported (6). Since "reason was privileged, or valorized, above all other human characteristics" and "writing...was taken to be the visible sign of reason", "blacks were 'reasonable,' and hence 'men,' if -- and only if -- they demonstrated mastery of 'the arts and science'" through writing (8). And, unfortunately, "blacks and other people of color could not write" (9). Gates focuses on "the Other" as an author/artist representing their self.

Foundational Racism

“We invent what we see” Hum (191.)

It is my belief that none of us are born with pre-conceived notions, we all are sponges, absorbing whatever is taught to us and said to us from the moment we are born, and the way we are raised is so vital, as it shapes who we become the rest of our lives. This is all too true when pertaining to race, as such a big part of racism is the way people are brought up, and how some are taught from an early age that certain races are inferior at certain tasks, superior at others, etc. This stereotyping has been a problem in this country forever, and despite making steps it is still a major issue today. The key aspect about racism in America that people easily forget is how recent the civil rights movement was, and how our parents and grandparents were alive when many blacks were still being forced to use separate water fountains, or when the Chinese were viewed as aliens, or how the National Guard had to be called in to let a black girl attend a high school.

The Stereotype of All Stereotypes

Established ideas and frames of mind direct every other aspect of one’s life whether he or she is fully cognoscente of it. Some of the effects on those aspects are more explicitly influenced by details of the subconscious than others, but are nonetheless present factors. Cultures make it a point to acknowledge differences based on physical attributes and qualities, using them to construct ideas and form assumptions as means of categorizing people. Society and exposure are mainly responsible for these perceptions and understandings of how the world works and how people are; things heavily associated with other things frame these expectations that people have for things or people categorized in a certain way (going beyond race). A specific case that demonstrates the concept is the influence of racial gaze and perception of “design”.

An Accurate History Through the Racialized Gaze

The last book my 6th grade English class read was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We began our unit on the book with short lecture from our teacher. “I know I am strict about no foul language in this classroom” she began, “but in understanding this book, we are going to encounter some”. She explained to us a bit about the book and its context. She explained that there are words in this book, racial slurs, that we should never repeat to another person. “But” she explained, “to pretend that these words were not used as they were at this time in our history would be an insult to all those who endured it”.

How Race Can Alter History

Made up depictions of race throughout history have developed and staged how we view certain races. In regards to how people shape their views by the content that is available to them, "...shape their interests through the design of messages with resources available to them in specific situations" (Hum 191). The process of design is one in which everything about the design is made up in part by the designer based off certain characteristics that negatively depict a race. Hum uses "radicalized gaze" (Hum 192) in order to describe how these images aimed focus on a  negative aspect of the race, "by directing our attention to how designers may unwittingly sustain practices of racialization and perpetuate racially based sociocultural exclusions" (Hum 192).

Both speak on the problem of people of color adopting a white perspective

Hum introduces her idea of Design to talk about the racialized gaze. Her term, Design is related to both the noun and the verb. Design as verb “spotlights the processes of stregic choice making involved in deploying representational resources, such as images and words, to enact our communicative purposes” (Hum 191). Design as a noun: “focuses on the existing resources from which those representations are crafted” (Hum 191).

Access of Sight

On page 191, Hum wrote, “We invent what we see.” In the 1880s during The Yellow Peril, Thomas Nast, a self-proclaimed progressive and American cartoonist, documented the “progressive” ideologies at the time. However, his stereotypical portrayals of foreigners and minorities did anything but spread a progressive message. In Mitchell’s article, we look at Jacob Rii’s How The Other Half Lives and examine how the process of the photographs taken during nighttime police raids perpetuate a violent dynamic between a photographer and his subject/powerless victim. Hum breaks down design as a process that roots from existing resources, and in photo-journalism, photographers often go to dangerous extents in order to expose a certain “truth”. However, the intentions of cartoonists and photographers and the constructs of both industries are based on the obsession of making vulnerable moments, peoples, or situations, into subjects of their narrative.

Race and Design

Hum introduces the idea of design to us as both a noun and verb. As a verb, design can be understood as the “process of strategic choice making involved in deploying representational resources (images and words) to enact our communicative purposes, while, as a noun, design is defined as the “existing resources from which those representations are crafted.” Design, as Hum argues, provides a theoretical framework for visual rhetoric by directing our attention to how designers and authors may sustain practices of racialization and perpetuate racially based sociocultural exclusions, referred to as the habit of racialized gaze. This gaze as design functions as both the choice-making process of design and the available recourses used. This framework of race-related visual phenomena offers first, the methodological possibility, with design promoting a conscious awareness of the recursive relationship between rhetorical purpose and perceptual habits, while visual representations shape even as they are shaped by our ideologies on race relations. Theoretical possibility focuses on how both processes and resources are already sedimented with perceptual habits that may run counter to designer’s professional goals. The pedagogical concept requires that designers cultivate an overt awareness of the diverse culturally dominant perceptual habits that influence design. Combining these ideas, we can analyze the ways in which design takes into account the ways in which a culture’s own perceptual habits influence or limit the rhetorical purpose of images seeking to initiate social transformation.

Oppression in Literature

Gates uses a similar methodology as Hum to describe the roll race and history play in literature. For Gates, early literary theory was concerned with historical perspectives in literature. Literature was interpreted according to the period in which and the people by whom it was written. Race was crucial in literary criticism. It was considered to be the origins of man, the truths, ideas and ideals held by the author as part of the race. These were expressed implicitly and explicitly in their work. For gates, many of his ideas stem from his belief in the meaninglessness of race as a biological classification. We as a society treat race like a scientific classification. That classification leads us to further isolate ourselves from one another by attributing characteristics and biases to that race. To clarify lets dissect a concept called “talking white”. This is a concept that Gates addresses in another one of his works. “Talking white” is the idea that ones ability to speak properly and intelligently is attributed to their relative “whiteness”. Similar to the story about Phillis Wheatley, it’s as if other races must “prove” their whiteness in order to be considered intellectually equal. But under this racialized white gaze like the one described in Hum’s work, African Americans will never be able to create their own personal perception of themselves or the work they create because of the feeling of “otherness” that this gaze and racial classification causes. We associate characteristics concerning intelligence with the attributes of certain races. Gates would likely take issue with that sentence alone simply for its acknowledgment of specific races having specific attributes, an idea that contradicts his argument.

Adjusting Our Gaze

Throughout her essay Hum calls on readers to identify the relationship between design and race, specifically the racialized gaze. First she provides readers with clear definitions for both terms, identifying design as a “processes of strategic choice making involved in deploying representational resources” (191), and the racialized gaze as “a dominant cultural habit for perceiving race related phenomena” (192).  When looking at the relationship between the two Hun asks readers to recognize how designers may sustain racialization and stereotyping and perpetuate racial exclusions. She also goes on  to explain how this racialized gaze is often ingrained in design decisions, oftentimes without deliberate intent.

Race Unites People In a Toxic and Misleading Way

While it is common to think of race as a dividing force between people of different skin colors, religious affiliations, and social situations, the concept of race can also be a cohesive force but in an ultimately negative way. Race seems to imply that the greatest divide between people is their skin color even though, like mentioned by Gates, has no biological backing. The components of the racial divide suggest that people within particular races resemble each other to the greatest degrees of comparison which is disgustingly inaccurate. A white man can resemble a black man in humor, style, taste, and so on just as equally as two people of the same race. Because we have comprised a concept of race, race has now become a prominent literary component, in a way that really is not necessary if this sort of divide had never been created.

Racial Perception Throughout History

Although Hum and Gates elaborate on different focal points in their argument, “Between the Eyes: The Racialized Gaze as Design” and “Writing Race and the Difference it Makes” both make strong accusations that racial perception ultimately influences our interpretation of art and literature throughout history. Hum begins this argument by elaborating on the complexities of racial perspective and breaking down racialized gaze as Design. “No one approaches images with an innocent eye. Designers’ perceptual habits, such as the racialized gaze, influence their choice-making processes, including choosing, sequencing, and combining resources.” (Hum 2) Hum is essentially arguing that one’s racial perspective may be shaped by historical changes in representation. The projections of those representations are what constitutes racialized gaze as Design. Hum views racialized gaze not only as a perceptual habit, but also as a dominant cultural habit for perceiving race-related visual phenomena.

Painting the Portrait of African Americans

In her article "Between the Eyes: Racialized Gaze as Design," Sue Hum writes, "we invent what we see" (Hum 191). The assigned readings by Sue Hum, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Anna Julia Cooper contain a common idea: that for African Americans who have been dehumanized and stereotyped, who "internalize the white racial gaze," and who have been silenced in literature and art, it is nearly impossible to invent without limitation or to create without first responding to traditions of abuse and mockery (Hum 194).

Contemporary Poetry and Racial Gaze

These three readings actually tie together well with something else I've been studying as of late. That being poets of the 20th century of whom are either first or second generation immigrants. In Gates' essay he talks about how the white man discouraged and didn't believe in the writings of a black man/woman. In the 1700's Gates shows us that many theorists were throwing the idea of blacks writing out the window, never letting their work even surface. This caused black writers to learn and speak/write the way of the white man in order to even be remotely heard. How does this relate to poets in the 20th century?

Race and Gender

     While reading these three articles by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Anna Julia Cooper, and Sue Hum, I couldn't help but notice the relation of race to the current understandings of gender. There is the idea that history repeats itself, and that is why we must study history to understand the world around us; but with these articles I kept coming back to the notions of gender specificity taking the place of race in these articles. I am by no way saying that the notions of race that are being addressed in these articles have been solved and it is time for a new ideological set to come to the forefront of society, but rather I present the notion of how gender terminology is now moving into the spotlight in society, as ideas of race become more known.
   

Race as a Construct

A panel from American born Chinese, a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang. The character pictured is 

aimed to represent the stereotypes used to label and alienate people of Asian descent.

Understanding the idea of "race" as a construct requires that one understands the historical context of its conception and usage. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells us in Writing "Race" and the Difference It Makes, “Western writers in French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and English have tried to mystify these rhetorical figures of race, to make them natural, absolute, essential. In doing so, they have inscribed these differences as fixed and finite categories which they merely report or draw upon for authority” (Gates 6). Gates tells us that the creation, usage, and perpetuation of the idea of "race" only serves to alienate people from one another - particularly those who are less privileged in historical and contemporary environments.“It takes little reflection, however, to recognize that these pseudoscientific categories are themselves figures. Who has seen a black or red person, a white, yellow, or brown? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality” (Gates 6).

More Real...Less Normal

Upon first glance of the exhibit by Edouard Duval-Carrie, the only opinion that came to mind was, “this is a beautiful chaos.” Sounds crazy I know, but that was how I felt because I knew what I was looking at was beautiful, however, the message a bit unclear or chaotic. I knew and felt that I needed a more in depth and observational glance. I think I started with the title itself even though you can not SEE it in the exhibit (because it is just the title). “Decolonizing Refinement” was an interesting way to give a “heads up” to what was going on and personify the art pieces that would be included in the exhibit. When you hear refinement, other words and actions involved may be purification, improvement, elegance, etc. That right there implies the “sublime” that Longinus talks to us about. Sublime deals with excellence and elevation of morale and spirit. Furthermore, if you are following the 5 sources of sublimity that Longinus gives us, the exhibit pretty much hits on all of them. "Great thoughts, strong emotions, certain figures of thought and speech, noble diction, and dignified word arrangement" all play a role in the exhibit.

[reposting] "Who decides what genre is?"

In analyzing the exhibit by Edouard Duval- Carrie, it was very interesting to see how different these exhibits really were. Most of the exhibits really did go outside of the usual genre conventions. Often, I found myself not really knowing how to dissect the images in the sense of characterizing them in a certain way, which in a way was a good experience for me considering I shouldn't necessarily go into a piece, assuming that there is a whole conventional genre collection present. After attending the exhibit and being able to read Bawarshi article about genre function, it definitely opened my eyes more to the altering ideas of what genre really is and entails. Bawashi breaks the article into the different types of genres can act as- genre as site of literary action and genre as site of social action. This is interesting to see that genre can have more of a usual definition in terms of interpreting a text based on other literary texts that you have experience with; however, with genre being a form of social action, this shows how texts can be interpreted based on ones social aptitude and that ones life can alter the interpretation and translation of a piece into a different genre. Bawarshi says that “when writers begin to write in different genres, they participate within these different sets of relations, relations that motivate them, consciously or unconsciously, to invent both their texts and themselves.” (17). C. Miller responds to this point by proving the social function in a way by saying that, genre function is “an aspect of cultural rationality”. I saw in the art exhibit that the lines and colors of the art was very simple and streamlined and really made me think of Longinus’s idea of the sublime. He talked a lot in his article about how beyond all of the hype and galore of glamorous of some art forms or of texts that use a lot of words to tell a story that can be understood and translated with fewer words because it is the soul that is supposed to interpret, according to him.

Dialogue with the Past, Present, and Future: the Benefits of Creating Across Genre

Beginning the unit on Text(uality), I was skeptical that theorists spanning such long ranges of time could all be connected to the idea of “the sublime” when they were all so radically different. However, in one week’s time I have been able to create a more nuanced, personal definition of what “the sublime” can mean and how challenging genre can really connect writers from all areas and experiences.

At the start of the week I was presented with Longinus' On the Sublime, William S. Burroughs' The Future of the Novel, and still was recalling back to my visit to the exhibit Decolonizing Refinement by Edouard Duval-Carrié. My brain was swimming with questions and contradictions that now highlight just how narrowly I was thinking. One hesitation I had was that while postmodernism seems as confusing as it is engaging with the intention to frustrate the reader, I thought Burroughs and Longinus could not be farther apart from one another. Or at least postmodernism attempted to communicate a different message than sublimity does with nature pointing to a transcended more orderly ideal. Moreover, I understood the exhibit was taking a new look at colonialism but I was not sure if that meant it was “sublime”?

Hybridity and Its Function!

Lloyd Bitzer tells us that discourse “comes to have a power of its own—“ in response to any situation. (Bitzer 13) Susan Delagrange’s Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement wondrously exemplifies this statement in that one might feel guided or even controlled by the form of the genre when trying to navigate it. Though I was physically in command of my fingers to move forward, my thoughts and interpretation were fully directed by the arrangement of the text. One might argue that, generally speaking, digital texts are far more directive than that of their printed predecessor, insofar as one is capable of digital comprehension. This is especially true for Delagrange’s text, as it is comprised of several genres and forms.

Delagrange’s Vehicle to the Sublime

When viewing a piece of art or reading a selection of text, one typically does not have the piece’s creator standing over their shoulder explaining to them what they should get out of the work. Instead, the viewer interprets the piece in their own mind, building off of previous knowledge and understanding to develop meaning in the piece. In this way, the consumer of the piece is actually the author in a sense according to AnisBawarshi. The Author who originally penned or created the piece is still forever tied to it as the creator and is due that credit, but as time goes on, that connection loses its meaning and they are demoted to merely part of the literary text.

Genre Changing with Time

Conventional definitions of genre tend to be based on the idea that they constitute particular conventions of content (i.e. themes or setting) and/or form (i.e. structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them. However, with the development of new technology and social media, the distribution of media has changed dramatically and scholars/critics cannot ignore that the conventional definition of genre was not good enough anymore. For example, letters and newspapers were not only getting distributed by mail, but electronically as well. This change in distribution changed one of the five canons of rhetoric, delivery, what is delivery, and how we define delivery. Therefore, we see Amy J. Devitt, an English professor at the University of Kansas, take on the challenge of redefining genre. She begins to develop her genre theory "with rhetorical situation and expands it to encompass a semiotic situation and social context (Devitt, 576)." By including semiotic situation and social context, she not only looks at form and context to define genre, but also the environment and social situation the work was written in. By doing this, Devitt conveyed that genre is not a static concept, but always changing because genre is constantly responding to, as well as constructing recurring situations. We see genre change with society because "situation is inherently social as well as a rhetorical concept (Devitt, 579)."

Walking Backwards into the Sublime

Ye Mimi’s video project, “Was Being Moved” combines animation with real film images and brings together two forms of art expression: poetry and film. This project appears to be something different than two genres being expressed at once, and rather combines poetry and film into creating its own, single genre.  

“Was Being Moved” depicts animated postcards to a Mr. Parade, the author telling him about feeling a man push them to move or walking backwards to be able to see further. These postcards are interspersed between images and videos of crowds and strangers in busy cities. These images express just as much thought as the words do, and they eventually come together when the postcard writer shares a song she wrote. Most of the words and the video seem to be almost random, not really supporting each other but providing something new to say. As she sings, different images flash through, mostly out of focus or distorted in some way. We are not exactly sure what we are seeing, but this works perfectly as these phrases in Mimi’s poem also do not seem to be perfectly clear in their meaning.  

"Was Being Moved?" A Hybrid Text: Where Mixed Genre Meets Sublime

Bawarshi begins by extending Foucalt's idea of author-function to help us understand genre. He argues author-function is a subgroup of genre function. Genre function, according to Bawarshi, "constitutes all discourses' and all writers' mode of existence, circulation, and functioning within a society"(22). We see genres coming together in poets, Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?" video. She uses the power of hybrid text, as defined by Katherine Hayles, and mixes two mediums and, in that way, two genres into one cohesive text. In Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?", she mixes vignettes from film with the poetry genre to "erase the border", as mentioned by the producer on Vimeo -- Rhizome, between the individual genres and create one single genre.  Without a border between the different genres, the hybrid text genre that she molds through this film, becomes its own singular genre: one "that does not simply regulate a pre-existing social activity", but instead "constitutes the activity by making it possible by way of it's ideological and discursive conventions"(Bawarshi 24).

Genre and Subversion: A Crucial Balance

When I consider my own life and those things in it that I have read, watched, or heard that greatly affected me, I find a common thread between them all: they surprised me. I should clarify, because surprised can mean a wide array of things. I am not referring to the surprise you might find in watching a horror movie, the sudden shock of a scream sound effect or the visuals of the monster jumping into frame. Nor am I talking about the surprise one might feel when they expect to see or hear something, but they are unsure of when. The cameo appearance of a classic character in a sequel for example, or the known catch phrase of a hero in a book. These types of “surprises” are closer to a secret, one kept from the audience and known only by the author until the moment they finally decide to share it, the goal being to garner a fleeting emotional response.

Genre Theory

According to "The Genre Function," Bawarshi argues that as an author beings to write in various genres, they start to "participate within these different sets of relations" within the genre that can work to influence their writing, either consciously or unconsciously. Genre acts as a site of action that helps the writer to articulate motives to write, serving as "an aspect of cultural rationality." Genre theory, in turn, seeks to explain the actions of the writer in creating their works rather than just acting as a description of the works, investigating the "linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions" that work to shape these text-types.

Bawarshi & Delagrange

Analyzing Susan Delagrange's "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement” we understand her focus on digital media work that emphasizes areas of embodied digital representation and the cannon of arrangement to discover ethical bases for action. Through her projects and acts of remediation, she constructs a hybrid genre to create an epistemological act and determine meaning. This techne (productive art) is interactive digital media that involves both abstract and applied knowledge for viewers to manipulate and learn from material evidence. Working against traditional print, this rhetorical art opens up new opportunities for emotional response, as it arranges and articulates visual evidence, artifacts and links for audience engagement. Upon entering this website, one views a closed wooden cabinet that can be opened by clicking the doors to reveal small tile graphics of Delagrange’s art, in which the viewer can navigate across. She uses "Wunderkammer” to argue the 16- century cabinet as models of visual provocation, to manipulate objects to create and discover new meaning. The concept of this project makes it a productive thought engine that allows viewers to reflect on abstract thought through tangible visuals. This framework bridges the gap between the mental and physical, enabling rhetorical practice and discovery.

The Breaking of Genres and Waves

Ye Mimi”s “Was Being Moved?” is a very interesting piece of work that uses images, videos, written letters, and read/sung poems to bring forth emotion and ideas from viewers. This is a very unique piece of work as it bends the notion of genre that we have previously come to understand. In the piece “The Genre Function,” Anis Bawarshi states that “Genres are discursive sites that coordinate the acquisition and production of motives by maintaining specific relations between scene, act agent, agency, and purpose” (17). “Was Being Moved?” lies within multiple grand genres like film, poem, and letters, while still finding a way for those mediums to relate. She has, in a sense, created a new genre that allows poetry and film to be united for her cause. By erasing the boundaries between film/images and poetry, Ye Mimi has a chance to reach the viewer in a whole new way.

Edouard Duval Carrie: Reflecting the Sublime

Like art, more specifically the concept of what is good versus bad, the sublime can’t be calculated, imitated or measured. In his piece, “On the Sublime” Longinus makes several assertions regarding what he considers to be the sublime as well as the necessary steps for one to achieve it. I found several instances where the installations in the Edouard Duval-Carrie were reflective of ideas concerning the sublime and claims made by Longinus.  One of Longinus’ major claims is that in order for one’s writing to reach the sublime, the writer must possess and exhibit what he considers to be “moral excellence.” One of the major aspects of Edouard Duval-Carrie’s exhibit, and perhaps my favorite aspect, was his critique of colonization through art.  I would argue that this is a position of “moral excellence” as Carrie is criticizing a moral wrongdoing and further strengthening his path to the sublime.   

Can a Writing be both Sublime and Construct Genre?

Many linguistic and rhetorical theorists have attempted to answer this question over time. We will now attempt to answer it for ourselves by using concepts of two respected authors that have touched on the topic of genre in writing as a lens: Amy Devitt, and the ancient philosopher only known as "Longinus". Although the subject matter that they touch on in both of their writings is varied, certain parallels can be made between the two pieces that state that writing can both construct genre and be sublime. However, there are several conflicting concepts in each of their philosophies that point to the answer that says no, a writing cannot both construct the genre and be sublime. I may not have a definite answer, but just as in writing, there is never a definite answer. In this blog post I will explore both sides of the argument; but, for the most part, it does seem like a piece of writing does have the ability to construct genre and be sublime. 

Achieving the Sublime is an Individual and Dynamic Quest

To start, we must understand what the sublime is in it broadest sense. Through understanding it's basic definition in regard to aestheticism, we will be able to better understand the fluidity of the term. In the most general form of understanding, the sublime is the magnitude of greatness something achieves through thoughtful craft. Longinus' thoughts on the sublime suggests that he thinks of it "as a quality that has a powerful emotional impact on its audience, or, more specifically, an impact that awakens the audience members to their higher nature" (Longinus pg. 354). Nonetheless, this is just one classical interpretation of the sublime that differs from more modern definitions. The diverse nature of ideas regarding the facility of the sublime themselves prove that the term is quite progressive. The essays we have discussed in this course focus on reaching the sublime in a literary sense.

Duval-Carrie's Approach to Sublimity

Edouard Duval-Carrie’s “Decolonizing Refinement” features a collection of artifacts that tell the story of African diaspora through the usage of different art mediums (sculptures, window frames) and photographs. The exhibit not only features art from Duval-Carrie but also historical photographs from local slave plantations throughout north Florida. The different “genres” used in the exhibit are not literary genres but instead genres of art varying from oil paintings, plexiglass frames, sculptures, and actual tools and replicas of slave ships used during slavery in the 19thcentury.

Devitt, Bawarshi & Wunderkammer Constructing a New Meaning of Genre.

The work of Susan H Delagrange, Wunderkammer, Cornell and the Visual Cannon of Arrangement, is a perfect example of a dynamic genre that is fluid not rigid according to Devitt (579). This fluidity and non rigidness is what makes this project a "Hybrid genre", mixing many genres into one and intertwining them to make new episteme through different modes of delivery. This shift in rigidness of a structured genre allows for a more open interpretation of the information. The project by Delagrange is an interactive multimodal "cabinet" that uses both written passages and pictures forming a process to map and re-map our physical and conceptual worlds in order to determine their meaning.

The Wunderkammer as a Hybrid Genre

It is safe to say that the writers of the 21^st century have all the access in the world to new and unique ways of expressing their works, access that writers of yesteryear could have never imagined. Yet, these programs and new scientific breakthroughs do not make writing effectively easy, it does not mean that beautiful poetry is going to come flowing out of you; the tasks of a writer still remain daunting; however it is comforting to know all the help that we have. Yes, writers can do marvelous things with their poetry, whether it is through a special computer program or simply a small distinct feature, writers have the ability to make their works complex and one of a kind like never before, such as Susan Delagranges’s Wunderkammer piece, exhibit, catalog; I don’t even know what to call it. From the moment I opened the webpage I was intrigued how it was set up almost as if it were a menu for an online catalog site; which in a way it was yet just not what we are used to. Something I did not realize until I read a fellow classmates response was the fact that when you opened the webpage it came up as a “closed cabinet”, but once you clicked on the page the cabinet opened up, serving as the perfect analogy for the “closed cabinet” idea that is presented immediately. 

Edouard Duval-Carrié, The Sublime, and Genre

Edouard Duval-Carrié's collection of art, collectively known under the title "Decolonizing Refinement," is a breathtakingly vibrant collection that, according to the artist himself, aims to shed light on a history “often untold. This history has, indeed, masked slavery, racism, and economic injustice with the ornamentation of of genteel society." In this exhibit, it seems that Duval-Carrié wishes to draw attention to a type of expression that was historically repressed as well - the notion and practice of "Black Art."

Through his use of bright colors, multiple mediums, an affinity for sparkles, and the use of many materials that once were symbols of black suppression (sugar, turpentine, etc.,) he manages to break through genres and offer genre an unique challenge: to redefine itself. Devitt tells us that "Genres develop, then, because they respond appropriately to situations that writers encounter repeatedly. In principle, that is, writers first respond in fitting ways and hence similarly to recurring situations; then, the similarities among those appropriate responses become established as generic conventions. In practice, of course, genres already exist and hence already constrain responses to situations" (Devitt 576).

Duval-Carrié's Sublimity Through Genre Construction

Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit is a phenomenal representation of how intertextuality is translated into multimedia art. It excels in Longinus’ definition of the sublime but raises interesting questions about Devitt’s concepts of genre. According to Longinus, one of the key elements of rhetorical sublimity is visualization. Rhetorical visualization is most effective when it accurately involves engaging, factual arguments. Undoubtedly, Duval-Carrié masters this concept because of the complexity of historical truth that brings his works of art together, including the colors utilized, artifacts displayed, religious/mythical connections, and so forth. For example, in his series of the Caribbean mythical creature Soucouyant, Duval-Carrié depicts the vampire-like creature in different “moods” through colors and uses marine objects to symbolize Caribbean life as well as the sea that represents exportations of goods and slaves alike. 

Use of Genre in Wunderkammer

First, when looking at Susan Delagrange’s Wunderkammer I’m instantly reminded of the cut-up technique that William Burroughs’ expounded upon in his The Future of the Novel. Burroughs explains that his fold-in method, in which he folds a page from a text down the middle and places it on another page to form a composite text. He argues that his “From two pages an infinite number of combinations and images are possible… the method could also lead to a collaboration between writers on an unprecedented scale to produce works that were the composite effort of any number of writers living and dead.” Burroughs intended for his works to be read a certain way. He seemed to have the idea that his composite works would still all have their pages related to one another to create something that was still a narrative with a notable order. Wunderkammer seems to take Burroughs’ technique steps further as its pages are more loosely connected. And the reader is prompted to go through them in order but may choose several more different ways to read through the slides of information. 

Genre Theory v. Subjective Sublimity

Edouard Duval-Carrie’s exhibit goes out of its way to deconstruct the sins of colonialism and highlight the culture and splendor of a victimized indigenous people. Most of the works in the exhibit gain their emotional power, or sublimity, through the genre in which they are viewed in. And while Bawarshi adamantly draws from various literary and rhetorical theorists to assert that genre as a concept is “constitutive rather than merely regulative,” meaning that it is not solely a means to classify discourse, I do question how relevant his theory of genre is when faced against the inherently subjective concept of sublimity (Bawarshi 24).

Duval-Carrie's Redefinition of a Genre

According to Bawarshi, “genres are discursive sites that coordinate the acquisition and production of motives by maintaining specific relations between scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose.” (Bawarshi, 17) In the literary world, genre ultimately provides us with conventions and standards by which we compare and categorize all texts. Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit is a vivid display of colors and photorealistic images that culminate to provide perspective into the arts of the African Diaspora and perhaps challenge genre conventions with his use of multimedia. 

Duval-Carrie’s exhibit challenges notions of genre that we’ve been conditioned to, most specifically as they pertain to what can be defined as an artistic work.  “The genre function, thus, constitutes how individuals come to conceptualize and act within different situations, framing not only what Foucault calls a discourse’s mode of being, but also the mode of being of those who participate in the discourse.” (Bawarshi, 23) The artwork truly sets itself apart not only with its use of vibrant color and translucent surfaces, but with it’s ability to draw together separate images and allow them to work as a whole. Duval-Carrie makes use of realistic visuals of black and Caribbean people alongside images that are hand drawn and painted, ultimately challenging the constraints of what defines an artistic piece.

Susan Delagrange's Wunderkammer and Amy Devitt's Genre

Susan Delagrange's "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement" is à prime example of à hybrid-genre. Susan combines the two genres known as digital media and traditional writing. Upon clicking the link from the blog site, the viewer is introduced to cabinet doors that lead to rows of tiles. When one clicks on one of these tiles, they are exposed to slides that showcases ideas and their explanations. All thirteen of these tiles, include àn image on the left and writing in à box on the right. The images are there to help the view better visualize what the author of this project is trying to explain. Including images along with the explanation makes it less likely that the reader will misunderstand the what is being described.

A Sublime Hybrid of Bawarshi and Longinus

In Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?", we are introduced to a hybrid text of words and moving imagery. Typically, poetry is presented in a stationary format to be read, but Mimi's video incorporates her words into motion, including background images to help illustrate her words. While combining two different styles of text, video and words/poetry, this breaks the boundaries of genre that normally follow these texts, creating a hybrid genre or the hybrid texts. Bawarshi describes the change in how genre is perceived and represented when he says it, "has helped transform genre study from a descriptive to an explanatory activity, one that investigates not only text types and classification systems, but also the linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions underlying and shaping these text types," (17). This essentially means that we longer have to view genre as just something to classify texts under, but can use it to reveal the deeper meanings behind these textual conventions and why they are in place. Mimi's piece is an example of why these conventions should be broken, to blur the boundary between genres, and making it a sublime project.

Art and Genre

Amy Devitt in her article Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept she lays out the ground work for the new concept of genre. "Genre is a dynamic response to and construction of recurring situation, one that changes historically and in different social groups, that adapts and grows as the social context changes," (Devitt 580). The idea that genre changes constantly and adapts to the new social movements and changes of the period is one that is important when thinking about Duval-Carrié's exhibit in the Tallahassee Arts museum entitled "Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié". In this exhibit we can see the work from the Haitian-born artist who lived in Miami. Duval-Carrié's works take on their shape due to his Caribbean roots. The exhibit was driven by ideologies in North Florida as well as the southeastern United States and had traces in plantation agriculture, race, and slavery. His pieces show a uprising of art that has been historically ignored, Black art. The notion of genre shaping situation is one that is prevalent in this collection do to it being art work that depicts the notions of the white man from the perspective of the slave.

Longinus, Devitt, and Duval-Carrie

As I tried to figure out yesterday, Longinus has an interest in language, whether he dances around it using audience as a form of language or not, I'm still unsure. However! I have come to some realizations that help us understand both Longinus and Devitt (funny to put these two in the same post), and in turn put them in some sort of relation to Duval-Carrie. With Longinus he wants us to understand the specificity of the sublime, I mean the sublime of his time period, not the artistic 18th century sublime. Longinus's sublime that refers to "the echo of a noble mind" (pg. 350) Which could be better said as the sublime can only be reached under certain circumstances of clarity, and I guess, for lack of better words, a powerful mind.

Genre and Wunderkammer

Susan Delagrange's digital media project, "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement," takes the form of an interactive wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. The new media project transcends the genre conventions of traditional academic works, functioning instead as a hybrid genre. 

When you navigate to Delagrange's project, you immediately see a closed cabinet. Clicking on the cabinet opens the drawers and allows audiences to see the culmination of Delagrange's work in the form of tiles that fill the cabinet. Clicking on any of the tiles will take you to a screen that is half text and half moving image. You can interact with the tiles in any order and still get the overall meaning of Delagrange's work (which is what she encourages); however, I chose to follow a linear progression by navigating through the project via the line of tiles along the top of the screen. 

An Exhibit is a Real Life Genre (Sort of?)

In Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit Decolonizing Refinement, the artifacts were either abstract configurations of the artist’s own making (sculptures, paintings, and other physical art forms), photographs that captured moments during slavery (the focus of the exhibit), and actual findings from the time period the exhibit commented on.

The main piece that stood out to me, and vividly so, was his work titled the “Metamorphosis”. This piece was meant to explain the severing of culture from origin that occurred during the slave trade and the forced adjustment, including the family histories that were lost, that slaves had to encounter as their homelands were left in shambles. The image depicts a tree with branches that are made to model the prototype of a family tree. The roots of the tree are shackled to America as to symbolize involuntary restraint. A smaller detail that I caught was the depiction of a small island, in what I presume to be the West Indies (maybe Jamaica), set to fire. I believe the entire image comments on the destruction slavery brought onto the traditions of other cultures as well as long lasting effects of poverty and delayed economic development, as the thinkers and innovators of these countries were stripped away.

           

[reposting] A Weaving of Representation and Discourse: van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait and Velazquez's "Las Meninas"

William John Thomas Mitchell claims pictures should be treated at though they are living things. According to Thomas, we still do not have a full understanding of the impact pictures can have on language and literacy. Considering the dependencewe have on pictures and images to convey certain thoughts and ideas, our limited understanding of their nature is of great consequence.

​Mitchell goes on to describe what he calls “metapictures” as a “place where pictures reveal and “know” themselves, where they reflect on the intersections of visuality, language, and similitude, where they engage in speculation and theorizing on their own nature and history” (Mitchell 82). This portrait by Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck illustrates this self-aware nature Mitchell describes. The subjects of the portrait seem to be aware that they are posing for a portrait. The man’s dark clothing and woman’s green dress seem to have been consciously chosen to reflect a certain feeling and message about the subjects. The woman’s hand is resting on her pregnant stomach, highlighting her pregnancy. The subjects and the artist seem to be trying to speak to the viewer through the image using these techniques.

The Text-Image Combo - Communication with a side of identification!

Scott McCloud offers an excellent examination of the human ability to give life to the lifeless objects we interact with and create.  Specifically, he explains that the human experience is split into the realm of concept and the realm of senses, and that the interaction of these two communicate ideas and give life to inanimate objects. (McCloud 39) Both of our animated texts present pictorial depictions in a way that connects viewers to them and, in a sense, allows us to put ourselves in that tragic scene.

He also writes that the inanimate objects that we use “absorb our sense of identity” and, essentially, become one with us. That is to say that this computer is now an extension of me. Or that those drawings become an extension of the artists who drew them.  He carries this theory into the cartoon saying that they exist conceptually in the same way we exist physically. In a sense, we “lend” life to them. (McCloud 41) This lending of life allows readers to identify with the characters on the page and, in turn, the comic becomes an extension of their self. In this way, our creation is as conduit through which life is created.

           

[reposting] "Is it really in the eyes of the beholder?"

The way that anyone views anything is going to vary depending on countless factors. It’s impossible to really guess how people are going to interpret aspects of life, let alone art; that can often have so many interpretations. Some of the biggest factors that affect outlook are upbringing, race, culture, gender, age, and exposure. Take this postcard, for example:

A Speechless Heart-stopper

The animated clips of the bombing in Hiroshima were incredibly powerful. These scenes were both wildly different but yet relayed the same feelings towards the audience in a lot of ways. The clips were mostly voiceless. The anime cartoon only had a voice from the pilot of the plane, then deafening silence followed by the roaring of the explosions. No other words were said. The segment from “Hiroshima Remembered” had no words, only music, a child’s laughter, and then the explosions. There was nothing to listen to, no words to read, just images to watch. These animations portrayed a story better than most writings ever could.

             

Reflection in Art: A Subtle Way to Ask “Why” in the Search for “What”

Often times students are encouraged—as interpreters of art—to ask “what” is happening in a piece. Thus a strange thing starts to happen: the “iconic” part or focus of the image remains important but in the search for what is happening as a whole, we are clued into the background details just as much as the main action. In this way artists can sneak themselves (either literally or metaphorically) into a work. By placing themselves in the work the artists subtly can communicate their own interpretations of reflection, iconicity, and signification into the piece in question but this takes more reflection and historization to understand why they are doing it to look back at the epistemology in which they were composing. W.J.T. Mitchell’s Picture Theory, Nick Sousani’s Unflattening, and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can all be put in conversation with one another to see how theory can be applied to traditionally fine art as well as draw parallels between art and comics.

McCloud/Sousanis and Hiroshima

I chose to do Homework 5 on McCloud and Sousanis’ pieces and compare it to the animated video clips of the Hiroshima nuclear attacks. After reading their comics, I noticed that both authors put an emphasis on how people attach meaning to photos. In Sousanis’ 5th Dimension chapter of his comic, I learned that we use our imagination to find perspectives that aren’t easily accessible. Our imagination is what allows us to “create stable and single images that make it possible to us to think and act” (Sousanis 90.) It also allows us to shape concepts and create new ideas. By using your imagination, we are able to bring ideas to life, give them meaning and create stories which we then use to connect with other people. When he says ‘stories’, Sousanis is referring to human activities. Simply put, we use our experiences to assert meaning to things. Our Frame of Reference has this way of altering things and make two opposing points true. In the chapter titled Ruts, we learn that others have paved ways for our ideas and when our ideas form into solid forms, they then have the ability to shape us. Ideas become flat when we accept ideas as facts and no longer question them. Repetition is how we become proficient.

Hiroshima: Different Lenses

Because of their chosen style in getting their messages across, it seems clear that both Scott McCloud and Nick Sousanis understood that visual media is powerful, but when looking at the Hiroshima clips assigned to us, it may be safe to say that the two would have come to different conclusions about how the clips impact viewers.

McCloud would have focused on how we interact with the two Hiroshima clips by extending our identities into the videos, or the characters in the videos. Based on his ideas about comic styles in “The Vocabulary of Comics,” it’s likely that he would have decided the differences in the clips would begin in the style of the animation. In his work, he speaks at length about effects how well the audience makes a connection with the animation. He asserts that people seek to “mask” themselves in a character, and this is more easily done when a character is drawn in a more simple -- “iconic” or “conceptual” – way. He says further that people don’t feel the urge to identify with the inanimate objects in the background of a comic, and so artists may take care to add as many details to the scenery and to the objects in a scene as they like. The result of these ideas is that there have been numerous successful cartoons drawn with simplistically drawn characters going on adventures in striking, realistically drawn settings.

McCloud and Sousanis

In Scott McCloud's comic essay "The Vocabulary of Comics," McCloud argues that all of the things that we experience in our lives can be separated into two realms of perception: the realm of the senses and the realm of the concept. In the realm of the senses, we take in the times around us with our senses, having a very basic understanding of the physical objects that surround us but nothing more. In the realm of the concept, we begin to associate physical things with abstractions and ideas, understanding that our identity is not merely the physical things that we identify with, it is a concept that we process in our minds. McCloud claims that we begin with concepts and slowly begin to manifest ideas, like the concept of identity and self, with the physical objects around us that we identify with. The objects around us can become extensions of ourselves, as we begin to associate them with ideas. We assign meaning to the objects that we encounter through our senses, and gradually they become an extension of ourselves and a part of the realm of concepts.

How Deep are Cartoons? Use Your Imagination.

Across of the United States of America, the semi-educated working man have traditionally picked up their newspaper off the front lawn after being delivered by the local paper boy, and flipped through some boring stories he didn't care to read to reach the reason he reads the paper every morning: the cartoon comic strips. Far-off in a foreign land, a similar instance occurs, but in an entirely different context; young Japanese adolescents are lining up at their nearest comic store to get issues of their newest edition of their favorite anime comic magazine. But how can two different people from two vastly different cultures in different points in life have such similar response to the same genre of text? The answer lies with the one trait that all of humanity is born with: imagination. Imagination is what gives comic art its strong influence and complexity.

A Competition: Words vs. Images

McCloud creates a scale to understand pictures as texts: the more detailed and specific the picture is, the more realistic it is. The less details the picture has, the more iconic it becomes. Photographs, in this understanding, are very realistic, while cartoons are iconic and abstract understandings(46). McClouds scale moves from photographs to words, where words are the most abstract of all texts(49). McCloud argues that detailed pictures are received information, they are able to be looked upon and understood without formal education in order to understand them. While words are perceived information, they are a code for the meaning they attempt to represent, that requires a de-coding or education about the language code in order to perceive the information being shared (49). For a long time, images were seen as only supplemental to words and shaped by the words. However, McCloud shows us how words and pictures each have their own characteristics that they embody. The writer and the photo artist are usually separated entities who come together to produce specific texts, but McCloud faces a need to bring these two entities together for the sake of a better text (49). Mitchell also recognizes this separation of picture and words, and actually shows cases where they are pinned against each other: "the president's press secretary even confessed that it was difficult to counteract image an image with words"(367). If words and images are so separated, and even at times competing with one another, how can they be brought together to work together and engage the audience as one? We see this ability to a degree on television, as Mitchell explains through "From CNN to JFK". On television news, photographs, in the most realistic form (apart from the event itself) are shown but still manipulated by words and chosen organization of the photographs in order to "distort the truth",  even with realistic images to compete with the distortion.

An Animated Reality

In the two clips we see animated depictions of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The clips, while featuring different animation styles, shed light on a commonplace topic that a viewer who was unfamiliar with the subject could still comprehend. I will be using McCloud’s “Vocabulary of Comics” and Sousanis’s “Unflattening” to describe how the images of both cartoons work to create understanding.

McCloud coins the term “viewer-identification” and states that a central part of audience involvement is the degree to which an audience identifies with a story’s character. He theorized that we experience life in two separate realms, the realm of concept and the realm of sense. We enter the world of 1945 Japan in both clips with the aid of a “sensually-stimulating background,” filled with buildings and landscapes that tend to be slightly more realistic than the characters.

A Detailed Analysis of McCloud and Sousanis's Stances on Imagery & Imagination

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Nick Sousanis’ Unflattening both make strong claims regarding the incorporation of visual elements in writing. Despite their stylistic differences and modes of presenting their claims, both pieces make extensive arguments in favor of comic books as a legitimate medium of writing.

In Understanding Comics, McCloud presents his argument in the form of a literal comic book. Despite the informality often associated with comic books, McCloud challenges this pre-conceived notion by making detailed, reputable claims whilst incorporating the stereotypical cartoon illustrations of a comic book. The purpose of the book, as a whole, is to explain comics by giving it form, structure, a shared vocabulary, and generally informing readers on the medium itself. McCloud details how the abstract art of cartoons can often allow for a better expression of ideals due to their simplistic form and focus on only important details. This simplistic form also allows a broader classification of their imagery. Furthermore, this also allows more people to readily accept them and to see themselves in the artwork (hence why young children are drawn to cartoons).

Untitled

Graphics and language work towards the common goal of unified meaning. Detailed images help to assist our understanding of language when sophistication lacks, as text compliments the quality of images when the resemblance is absent. Through the study of comics and illustrations, we can gather that realism is the concept that portrays complexity through imagery. Through different methods and techniques of sophisticated imagery, artists can choose to objectify power to emphasize or resemble certain scenes and identities. This allows the viewer(s) to create new value, meaning or perspective from certain objects to have been extended a certain type of abstraction or “new life.” These images must work hand in hand with our imaginations (both as artists and readers) to create meaning, and fill in the gaps of action and agent for us to be engaged. When analyzing images and illuminated texts, we must not draw comparisons between the illustrations and language (visual and verbal), but instead learn to study the relations, the similarities and differences of the two that drive the collaboration and narrative. When comparing photography and language, we must stress the idea that it is a message without a code, meaning they have a relationship with the reality in which they are representing. Although this is contradicted by the idea that photographs are imbedded with and invaded by language as we associate them with it as soon as they are viewed or analyzed. This said, photography is considered both a language, and not. When viewing photography, we create and loose value as we exchange complex ideas between the verbal and the visual. Text can also be used as an instrument in this way to often time give the image independency or associate new meaning.