Part II
Part II introduces three additional rhetorical functions of the visual that both depart from and extend the reach of the more traditional functions outlined in part I.
Figure 45. Spiderwort. Photograph. Kathleen Henning.
There are at least three factors that distinguish the functions of part II from their counterparts in part I.
First, the rhetorical functions of part II begin from a presumption of inequitable power relations and are not premised on traditional rhetorical contexts. Like the functions of part I, functions four, five, and six tend to operate in hegemonic contexts. However, these three are particularly attuned to the depths of field at which that hegemony operates. Adhering to theoretical orientations already resonant in the larger field of rhetorical studies, these functions move away from the forums of public address—both public and counterpublic—finding the rhetorical in relations among humans and with non-human others, in ambience and the habitual, in ecologies, flows, and stoppages. The notion of rhetoric underlying these rhetorical functions, in other words, is simultaneously more nefarious and more partial, more diffuse and more dangerous. These rhetorical functions of the visual are at work all the time, even when no one is speaking and there are no particular pictures to be found.
Second, as that last sentence suggests, the rhetorical functions outlined in part II only occasionally emerge from individual visual objects. Instead, they operate via habituated visual processes, ubiquitous technologies, and everyday visual encounters. They draw attention to the relationships between vision and control and to the sighted patterns infusing cultural and social practice. Our elaboration of these functions draws from research in psychology and physiology to understand deep-seated visual functions and the embodied yet socialized processes that perpetuate and make meaning from them.
Finally, each of these part II rhetorical functions of the visual begins from the assumption of unequal access to vision. Not everyone sees by ocular means, most viewing is technologically mediated, access and opacity are constant factors, and even under controlled conditions, viewers don’t necessarily all see the same thing. Focusing on such visual complexities means that these rhetorical functions are particularly well adapted to studies that aim to look across contexts without flattening difference.
By moving away from functions tethered to individual viewers, looking earlier in the process of visual meaning-making, and treating habitual rather than intentional sight, the rhetorical functions of part II—oversight, sight itself, and noticing—help rhetoricians retheorize what it means to see and be seen, rhetorically.