Aristotle, Reloaded

Like Bruce, I really liked Blair. I think it's because he drew on classical rhetoric, which I really like and am comparatively comfortable with. It seemed like he was mainly using Aristotle, so reading between the lines, I think he was drawing on the Aristotelian distinction (and tension) between dialectic and rhetoric. Dialectic, for Aristotle, was about logic, argumentation, and the discovery of truth; rhetoric was about the "available means of persuasion." So, under the heading of dialectic comes the classical syllogism (All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal), and under the heading of rhetoric comes the enthymeme (All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man. We supply the hidden premise: "And all men are mortal").

I've always liked Aristotle, too, because I see him as a viable middle ground between Platonic foundationalism (which necessarily, in my mind, must lead to totalitarianism), and Sophistic anti-foundationalism (which necessarily, again in my mind, leads to hard relativism). Aristotle held the discovery of truth and the power of language in tension.

So Blair's case fits with what I already know, and to some degree believe, about rhetoric (though I'm not sure dialectic is so sealed off from rhetoric). It makes sense that visuals function mainly as enthymemes, because I cannot imagine how they could proceed, visually, as a syllogism. How would that work? I'm trying to picture it. I suppose an infographic could work as a syllogism, but probably only if words were supplied.

And going off of Bruce's question, I don't see why visual rhetoric could not be both narrative and rhetorical. We've already observed in class that narrative often serves persuasive purposes (he use examples and anecdotes in arguments), and rhetoric, many believe, can be imbedded in narrative, even fictional narrative. Consider the disturbing visual of the 9/11 World Trade Center jumpers (which was very controversial, as you recall; in trying to be sensitive to the more tender-hearted among us, I will not link to it here. You can easily find it online). It tells a story: we know, because these people are in mid-air, that they jumped, and we recognize the iconic image of the burning tower. It is also arguably rhetorical: it argues the horror of terrorism.

I bought much of what Hill said, too. The idea of presence makes sense, as does the idea of vividness. We would naturally be more persuaded by images that are more vivid, and have more perspicuity. I connect the idea of vividness to the rhetorical idea of enargeia, which is vivid description, arousing the passions to work. An image of a starving child is more powerful than a load of statistics (which is why the infomercials don't tend to lead with statistics).

And as for Tange, I liked the tension she found in the rhetorical construction of middle class, where people are both summoned to join it and subtly assured that it is attainable (through fairly extensive literature about making a home correctly), and where those in it are subtly assured that their position is safe (because no literature actually details how to develop the elusive concept of "taste"). I plan to write on taste for Comp Theory this semester, by the way, so this was especially interesting to me.