Rhetoric as a house? And applying Barthes' ideas to visual rhetoric?

     One thing I took away from our first weekly was that Aristotle and Quintilian, despite existing in significantly different political (and thus, rhetorical) climes, seem to share similarly formulaic approaches toward the study of rhetoric. Both are seeking relatively solid definitions of ideas and terms, and because of this, their writing seems fairly straightforward and digestible; is this because they are pioneers working in a foundational stage of the study of rhetoric?

     This is going to seem like a random turn, but in my mind, I associate them with the character George Monroe (Kevin Kline) from the movie Life as a House. Monroe, who is dying a drawn-out death from cancer, works every day on the top of a cliff trying to build a house for a family that is not his own.  He puts one beam up after the other until he has a basic edifice; and then, when he becomes particularly weak, he attracts help from his friends and family, and they all work together toward finishing what will become, one day, a beautiful, completed home.
Likewise, Aristotle and Quintilian seem like they are trying to build a definite edifice, or a body, of ideas (or perhaps Aristotle and the Greeks are more like Monroe and Quintilian and the late-comers are more like Monroe’s friends and family in this metaphor). Not only this, but they are attempting to construct, or put together, something that is profound as well as functional; they both want to benefit humankind with their rhetorical models, just like Kevin Kline wants to benefit a family that is not his own with his house.

     But in my mind, Aristotle and Quintilian do not finish their edifice like George Monroe does. Barthes (and thousands of others) can show us that. In class the other day, during the section where we generated questions about Aristotle and Quintilian and then contemplated the effect of Barthes’ suggestions on those questions, I realized that adding Barthes’ input on top of Aristotle and Quintilian’s was good because it forced us to question the solidness of the definitions Aristotle and Quintilian give us. In class that day it felt like Barthes, if we keep with the Life-as-a-House-building metaphor, was an earthquake that rattled up the cliff face and tried the beams and concrete foundations of the house and plumbing and everything else. Some things were still standing afterward, some things became rubble (or perhaps material ready to be (re)incorporated into a bricolage), some things looked like they could have fallen but didn't, and some things looked like they made it through the tumult at first, but they ended up falling eventually. Basically, Barthes’ idea about the death of the author, while not devaluing Aristotle or Quintilian’s ideas, forced us to consider a different perspective (and for the sake of this metaphor, knowing what that new perspective is is less important than knowing there is one at all… and not just one, but scores).

     And so, while I do not consider Barthes to be one of my favorite theorists so far (I did become partial to Quintilian; he is like a Roman Captain America, advocating noble behavior that inspires young ones), I appreciate the value of rereading Aristotle and Quintilian through Barthes’ lens, because that lens did force us to reconsider those questions we wrote on the board. One question someone asked was, “What’s at stake with the nebulous definition of rhetoric?” The term rhetoric itself is already ambiguous and cloudy and very difficult to define, even with Aristotle and Quintilian and others drawing lines out like blueprints. Now Barthes has asked us to consider the role (or perhaps not the role, but certainly the existence/necessity) of the author (and do we go ahead and conflate the term author with rhetor? Or rhetor and scriptor? Or would Barthes realize and trade in a capital-R “Rhetor” for the rhetorical equivalent of a ‘scriptor’? And if so, what would that equivalent be?). And beyond that, we asked, “how much does character affect our definition of the act of producing rhetoric?” That’s a problem that both Aristotle and Quintilian tackle enthusiastically. What would Barthes say to that? And what does Barthes’ idea of a rhetorical audience look like? That’s one thing I really, really want to keep talking about. That, and how many connections can we make between this essay of Barthes’ about a new interpretation of literature and the construction of rhetoric, understanding that both are (arguably) comparable disciplines?

     Really, the question I want to ask the most is more specific, and it, similarly, has to do with the division of disciplines: beyond asking what we can transliterate from Barthes in terms of rhetoric in general, I want to know how Barthes’ theory affects the field and practice of visual rhetoric. This question might not seem that different from the more general question, but visual rhetoric is a vital communicative approach that every human who is capable of sight is proficient in, at least in terms of understanding it, if not generating it; after all, visual communicative skills are acquired earlier than verbal skills. We default to them every day. If someone is trying to understand how he or she is doing in a job interview, they read the interviewer’s body language, whether they realize it or not. We study nutrition charts on cereal boxes before we buy them. A mom understands that her child loves her because she sees the drawing they bring home from school of the family holding hands. Advertisers use images (moving and still) more than words to communicate to us that they have the best (insert product here). And, to me, it feels like every website is becoming so much more than verbal script- each one is an interactive interweaving of art and verbal text, a page strewn with pictures and illustrations and links as much as with literal words because we can (and do) read so much more than words with our eyes.

     Of course, asking this question means that I must ask, in addition, the difficult question:

                                                             “what is visual rhetoric?” 

     I can't answer that one, but I will be able to generate more questions because of it. 

     For instance, “if an artist is the one producing the visual rhetoric, what is Barthes saying about the artist? Or should I say “Artist”? or Advertiser? or Graphic Designer?" 

     Or, to be quite specific, “What would Barthes say about Picasso’s very politically-charged 1937 painting, “Guernica”?” 

     Or, “What would Barthes say about the contrast between something like “Guernica,” which is imbued with a sense of Authorial identity because of Picasso’s celebrity, and something like the 1145 Tree of Jesse window in Chartres cathedral, which is saturated with meaning and a message, but missing an actual author?”

     Also, to steal a few more of the questions from class and angle them toward the idea of visual rhetoric:

     “What is the moral responsibility of both the (visual) rhetor and the (viewing) audience?”

     (I think this one is a particularly pertinent one, since we’re dabbling also in the discipline of visual art): “How much natural ability is necessary in order to become a visual rhetor? Are you born that way?”

     Also: “Do visual rhetors have to be inherently good? Can they be "jerks" with good intentions?”

     “Is visual rhetoric and power the same thing?”

     And: “If deception is okay as long as it leads to a “good outcome,” how do we know what a “good outcome” is if we disagree on its definition?”

     I'm going to be thinking about these questions in the days to come, and I would love to continue discussing the subject with anyone who also shares an interest in visual rhetoric, or Barthes', etc. I also am deeply sorry for the late post; it won't happen again.