Kinematic Rhetoric

Joddy Murray

Description

A theory of rhetoric in the age of dynamic texts

Joddy Murray, in “Kinematic Rhetoric,” puts forward a theory of rhetoric that adds the elements of movement, sound, image, affect and duration to traditional accounts of digital, visual and multimodal rhetorics. His concept of “time-affect” images provides a complex and nuanced theory for composing that builds upon his earlier concept of “nondiscursive texts.” By turning to Deleuze’s work on cinema, Murray presents the “time-affect image,” which “generates" and amplifies affectivity through duration and motion, and is the key concept in this rhetorical theory. Motion, he argues, creates meaning that is independent of the content and, like all images, carries with it the potential for persuasion through the affective domain.

Introduction: What Is Kinematic Text?; 1. Motion and Image in Kinematic Texts; 2. Composing Time; 3. Immersion and Immanence in Kinematic Text; 4. Composing Kinematic Texts; Frequentatio; Notes; Media; Works Cited.

Sujets

• Composition
• Langage
• Language
• Writing
• Philosophy of language
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• PHILOSOPHY

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 24 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781785273346
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 827 Mo

Extrait

Kinematic Rhetoric
Kinematic Rhetoric
Non-Discursive, Time-Affect Images in Motion
Joddy Murray
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Joddy Murray 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Cover art, “Down the the Rabbit Hole,” licensed by the artist, Drew Mounce ( www.youngmouncestudios.com ).
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-334-6 (Epub)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-334-5 (Epub)
CONTENTS
Introduction: What Is Kinematic Text?
Symbolization and Textual Production
Expansion of Non-discursive Rhetoric
Textual Movement in the Digital Age
Chapter Summaries
1. Motion and Image in Kinematic Texts
Deleuze and Kinematic Text
Deleuzian Movement-Image
Deleuzian Time-Image
Time-Affect Image and Kinematic Text
Motion and Non-discursive Symbolization: Movement and Meaning
Time-Affect Images and Aurality
Motion, Learning, and Symbol-Making
Sinha’s Work on Blindness and Motion
Differentiation and Integration in Non-discursive Symbolization
2. Composing Time
Bergson’s Duration
Duration as Rhetorical
Becoming Multiplicities
Duration and Composing
Cinema as Data
Virtual Time-Affect
Space, Virtuality, and Kinematic Texts
Composing Time-Affect Images
3. Immersion and Immanence in Kinematic Text
Immanence and Transcendence
Immanence and Presence of Self
Immersion in Static Text
Immanence and Attention
Movement from Rhizomatic Middle
Hypermediacy and the Rhizome
Gaming and Kinematic Text
Immersion as Movement in New Media
Movement in the Era of New Media
Immersion Between: The World of Kinematic Text
4. Composing Kinematic Texts
Rhetorical Appeals and Duration
Logos in Duration
Ethos in Duration
Pathos in Duration
Kairos in Duration
The Values of Multimedia in Kinematic Rhetoric
Image Value in Motion
Unity Value in Motion
Layering Value in Motion
Juxtaposition Value in Motion
Perspective Value in Motion
Sensed Reality in Kinematic Rhetoric
What Is Sensed Reality?
Reality in Real Time
Reality out of Real Time
Time-Based Composing
Composing Model for Kinematic Texts
Reality as Text: Mobility, Holography, and Future Rhetorics
Frequentatio
Affect in Dimension
Rhetoric in Motion
Coda
Acknowledgments
Notes
Media
Works Cited
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS KINEMATIC TEXT?

Everything in which we take the least interest creates in us its own particular emotion, however slight this may be. This emotion is a sign and a predicate of the thing. […] Everything has its subjective or emotional qualities, which are attributed either absolutely or relatively, or by conventional imputation to anything which is a sign of it. (51)
— Ernst Cassirer, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (1868 [1992], 51)

This book articulates a theory of rhetoric in the age of texts in motion—or kinematic texts. In the short, time-based text above, there is a sense of speed, of anticipation: the text is layered with sounds and images that articulate meaning and emotion. There is an explosion of kinematic texts such as this one worldwide, and not just as part of the moving picture industry: moving texts are ubiquitous and growing exponentially in number and nearly anyone can create, edit, and distribute them using increasingly common technologies. The rhetorical aim for each of these texts is as diverse as one would expect and is present or common in nearly every variety of discourse. What’s more, texts composed with time and duration as affordances rarely stay within commonly understood genres: digital hybridization is especially prevalent in kinematic texts as multimodal composing possibilities proliferate.
Given these changes, how are texts that move rhetorical? What is it about movement in general—and the textual relationship to space and time in particular—that creates persuasive and effective texts? How do rhetorical appeals operate in time-based texts? What affordances are available to texts that move? How can we teach others to create moving texts that best take advantage of their rhetorical aims and purposes? How are the rhetorical characteristics of a moving text different than that of a static text, especially in context of non-discursive, image-based texts? As rhetors compose kinematic texts for audiences in the age of the network, there is a need for a rhetorical theory that begins to address some of these issues.
The past two decades have seen an explosion of rhetorical work around multimodality, multimedia, networked culture, virtuality, design, and composition. Much of this work has transformed the way rhetoric and composition (and several other disciplines and subdisciplines) regards reading (viewing), writing (producing/designing), and teaching. In On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies , Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes argue, “[i]‌n our steady incorporation of new media and multimedia forms of composing into our curricula and pedagogies, we have begun to meet the challenges of expanded notions of authoring, composing, and literacy” (3). The book also recounts a kind of history of this work as computing technology advanced, moving from a device that made writing and teaching more efficient to one that, after it is connected to the internet, ushered in a “new era in our understanding of textuality, literate practice, and compositional possibility” (31). The history of this work indicates a trend, one that challenges the very nature of most disciplinary boundaries, both for those of us in rhetorical studies and for those who find their disciplinary home in other fields that want to claim a whole medium or mode as their own. In the introduction to Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies , Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe indicate that “if we still concern ourselves with the study of language and the nature of literate exchanges, our understanding of the terms literacy, text and visual , among others, have changed beyond recognition,” reminding us how such work often challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries (12). Indeed, rhetoric, from its earliest roots, was both a discipline and a nondiscipline: rhetors, since antiquity, had to “master all disciplines that constituted human knowledge, especially philosophy” (Kraus 66). Although mastery is as improbable as it is impossible in the networked age, when it comes to symbolizing as effectively and persuasively as possible, rhetors who consider both old and new modes in their rhetorical production provide themselves with a wealth of new affordances, even new audiences.
That said, rhetorical theory has been slow to think through the implications of dynamic text specifically. There is something profoundly different about texts that move—so much so that many would hesitate calling them “texts” at all, favoring many of the other terms embraced by mass culture: film, video, movies, compositions, soundtracks, symphonies, and so on. Of course, as “the world as text” cultural perspective underscores, 1 these terms also highlight modes of symbolic expression that use differing technologies to symbolize dynamically in duration and in time. Many have looked at various artifacts through a rhetorical lens in the history of media scholarship, but my aim here is to theorize how to produce dynamic texts rhetorically in the context of the rise of the increasing potential that comes from our production capabilities in the age of networked devices. As future digital technologies become more immersive, more varied within the sensorium, even more challenging to the digital hybridity between virtual and actual worlds, our theories about how to produce them effectively and persuasively must evolve as well.
Kinematic Rhetoric attempts to theorize how dynamic texts—that is, texts composed with images in motion as a time-based phenomenon—are rhetorical: how these multisensory images operate as non-discursive language (performative and based in image) in contrast to static, discursive language (written/spoken). I use the term “kinematic” to draw etymologically both on its Greek roots, kinema , meaning movement, and its use in English (as in kinematic energy, or for the classical mechanics discipline of kinematics). The adjective “kinematic” and the noun “kinematics” also help to emphasize both the attempt to modify and name this rhetorical theory. As explained in some detail later, the neologism “time-affect image” is the basic building block of meaning for dynamic texts, revealing how meaning is composed in order to be persuasive and effective as language. I prefer the term kinematic precisely because of the way it characterizes the essential feature that defines these texts: as movement in time.
With the dominance of kinematic texts within the increasing variety and hybridity of textual practice, there is a growing chorus of scholars and educators who acknowledge the rheto