Last Call, Gettin Close: OSU Proposal=500 words, Abstract 149

Melanie Lee
Ohio University
Athens, OH
Leem5@ohio.edu

SpiderWeb Rhetoric: Spinning Multivalent Literacy with New Media Threads

This hybrid presentation questions traditional definitions of literacy and interpretations of images and calls for egalitarian, multi-sensual approaches to rhetoric and composition: SpiderWeb Rhetoric.

James Berlin claims that “literacy has always and everywhere been the center of the educational enterprise” (1), but that literacy requires “a particular kind of rhetoric—a way of speaking and writing” that fluctuates with context (Berlin 3-4). Traditional, Western ideas of literacy have, according to J. Elspeth Stuckey, reinforced social class structures and power differentials, perpetuating a culture of inequality (Stuckey 59). Literacy thus privileges logos at the expense of the image. The rhetorics that produce it have perpetuated what Anne Francis Wysocki calls “universal thought” (162): a masculine perspective that devalues Others. It is political and potent in its abstract, taken for granted, and nearly undetectable prejudice, embedded in cultural framework. The concrete and visual, traditionally coded as feminine, has long been devalued or displaced by the abstract and verbal, traditionally coded as masculine, particularly in academic realms. Yet the idea of literacy, as it applies to the teaching of rhetoric and composition, is expanding beyond traditional gender- and value-laden Western definitions, crossing verbal lines to validate visual competencies and acknowledge Othered perspectives. The centrality of image in communication is, as Gunther Kress notes, “’challenging the dominance of writing’” in and out of academe (qtd. in Wysocki 1).

But textbooks, curricula, and English department competencies suggest that most writing instruction today still enacts traditional literacy definitions and reproduces certain unquestioned values. These values replicate structures that split form and content and value the verbal over the visual. My doctoral program in rhetoric and composition exemplifies this paradigm. I am required to read volumes of words, even, ironically, words about images. Rarely do they include visuals. Rarely am I asked to contemplate or compose visually. The monovalent verbal retains academic hierarchy over the multivalent visual.

If we accept Susan Romano’s assertion that literacy acquisition in the new media college classroom depends upon a kind of shape-shifting, upon “the idea of invented, multiple selves” (249), and Wysocki’s arguments that “formal approaches to the visual” are neither “neutral” nor “universal” (Wysocki 158), are we disempowered by univocal literacy that denies its politicality? Can one voice teach multi-vocality? Can we demonstrate multivalent concepts through univocal rhetoric?

Wysocki notes that a new sensual aesthetic grounded in “reciprocal relationships” is needed to replace literacy’s form and content split with views of form as integrated with content (170). I argue that multi-modal rhetoric and composition classrooms require what I call SpiderWeb Rhetoric—rhetoric that disrupts (masculine) verbal order through integration of the (feminine) visual and (Othered) aural. SpiderWeb Rhetoric spins from new media threads that extend radially in all directions in attempt to connect diverse viewpoints. It equalizes ethos, logos, and pathos through images, words, and sounds. It enacts egalitarian ideology, joining form and content through multi-sensual experience. I will introduce and then demonstrate SpiderWeb Rhetoric in a brief multi-modal presentation, the materiality of which supports my claim.

Technology needs: Audio/video, projector and screen (iMovie capability)

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Abstract: SpiderWeb Rhetoric: Spinning Multivalent Literacy with New Media Threads

This presentation questions traditional literacy definitions and image interpretations and calls for SpiderWeb Rhetoric through a multi-modal presentation. Berlin claims that literacy requires “a particular kind of rhetoric” that fluctuates with context (3-4). Western ideas of literacy perpetuate cultural inequality (Stuckey 59), privilege logos at the expense of image, and maintain what Wysocki calls “universal thought” (162): masculine perspective that devalues Others. New literacy is expanding with new media, crossing verbal lines to validate visual competencies and acknowledge Othered perspectives even as textbooks, curricula, and English department competencies suggest that the verbal retains academic hierarchy over the visual. But can we demonstrate multivalent concepts through univocal rhetoric? I argue that composition classrooms need SpiderWeb Rhetoric to disrupt (masculine) verbal order through integration of the (feminine) visual and (Othered) aural, to connect diverse viewpoints, equalize ethos, logos, and pathos, and enact egalitarian ideology, joining form and content through multi-sensual experience.