Fantasy as Rhetoric

“I have [discussed] the difference between concrete objects and visual representations of those objects, but rhetorical images do not necessarily have to portray an object, or even a class of objects, that exists or ever did exist. A picture of a unicorn can carry meaning because the viewer has been exposed to other representations of unicorns, both visual and verbal, and can associate the new representation with memories of those encountered previously. And, like words, visual representations can stand in for abstract ideas” (Hill, 115). 

I chose this quote from Hill’s essay “Reading the Visual in College Writing Classes” as the most provocative quote so far because it directly coincides with my research interests: fantasy as rhetorical. The quote is provocative, for me, in two senses. First, it is exciting because it appears to validate my conviction that fantasy is, or can be, rhetorical. It touches, however briefly and unwittingly, on an area of rhetorical study that hasn’t really been dealt with in any significant way, to my knowledge. However, in another respect I’m puzzled by what Hill has to say here. He seems to be arguing that fantasy cannot act as a rhetorical agent unless the recipient has previous associations with the visual. In my own studies, I’ve looked at the ways in which fantasy might act as an agent of rhetorical invention. I define fantasy as a subordinate faculty to the larger imaginative faculty that produces novel images which not only don’t exist but could never exist in reality as we know it. There is much more to be said about the distinction I see between fantasy and imagination (or, how I define imagination) and how fantasy acts as invention, but for my purposes here, it would be diversion to go into it. What I’m really concerned with is Hill’s idea that a visual cannot be rhetorical to an audience unless that audience has previous similar associations. I don’t mean that I doubt the idea that the more we can associate visuals with experience from seeing and reading similar visuals, the more meaning we can derive. That seems evident enough. If I see a picture of a unicorn, I immediately think of a genre of visuals—namely, fantasy—and am keyed to a kind of message, by virtue of that genre, that will be conveyed. Yet, why can’t completely new visuals be rhetorical? Hill says further down on page 115 that the meaning of unfamiliar visual symbols will depend upon how much meaning the viewer is willing to assign to it. But what of visual depictions of fantastic objects (or, again, those objects that cannot be found in reality)? To make my line of thinking less abstract let me go back to Hill’s unicorn example: is a unicorn not rhetorical for someone who has never seen a unicorn? What amount of information does someone need to know before the visual becomes rhetorical? For instance, must one know that it does not and cannot actual exist? Then does it become rhetorical? In what ways will an unfamiliar fantastic image be rhetorical? Of course, like Hill says, it first and foremost depends on how it is received by the viewer—as with any visually rhetorical image.  I don’t have answers to any of my questions, just more questions. 

After all my talk about unicorns, I couldn't resist. This is rhetorical, right?