Eloquent
Images: Word and Image in the Age of New
Media
by Mary E. Hocks and Michelle R. Kendrick,
Eds.
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003
376 pp., 51 illus. b/w. Trade, $39.95
ISBN: 0-262-08317-5.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University
dgrigar@twu.edu
There is much to admire in Mary Hocks and
Michelle Kendricks Eloquent Images:
Word and Image in the Age of New Media,
enough, in fact, to recommend it as a text
for graduate courses and for use in scholarship.
For one, the book looks at visual rhetoric
from the perspective of many different fields,
from Rhetoric to New Media to Humanities
Computing to Cognitive Studies. Most of
the essays are insightful and thoughtfully
written. The issues raised surrounding visual
rhetoric are topical and reveal points of
contention among scholars and practitioners
about what it is, how it functions in relation
to verbal rhetoric, and how best to talk
about and teach it.
The stated focus of the book is to
explore "the current status of the eloquent
image by examining rhetorical and
cultural uses of word and image, both historically
and currently" (1); its essays, to
mix "theory, critique, and practice to present
the assumptions of an interdisciplinary
array of artists, critics, and designers
about the complex and often contradictory
relations of word and image" (2). The authors
also provide "critiques not only the dichotomous
thinking that renders image as feminine
and the word as masculine but also "descriptions"
of hypertext and hypermedia that "reduce"
them to "purely formal kind of poetics and
aesthetics" or "one kind of theory" or "any
theory of communication isolated from production
and rhetorical contexts" (2). A tall order,
indeed, and the reason some scholars may
not find the book, in its entirety, usefulthe
topics are so broad, and its voices are
so frequently dissonant.
Two strong chapters lead off the first section,
"Visual and Verbal Practices in New Media."
First, Jay David Bolter looks at the way
academe has responded to new media and provides
a narrative about the way his department
has come to understand it. His claim that
media critics "are committing themselves
to a particular perspective, in which the
word is the privileged mode of representation
and images are secondary and subsidiary"
(24) overlooks, however, N. Katherine Hayles
Writing Machines, which, balancing
images and words, upturns such stereotypes
about Humanities-based scholarship. The
second, Anne Wysockis essay, "Seriously
Visible," successfully critiques what can
only be called Urban-Myths-About-Hypertext:
"that hypertextual documents are by their
very structure supposed to encourage readers
into more active and engaged relationships
with texts and thus with each other," and
2) documents that "give more weight to their
visual rather than their verbal components
ought not to be taken seriously or ought
to be relegated to children an the illiterate"
(37). Hers is the liveliest writing in the
volume.
Part 2 at "Historical Relationships between
Word and Image" offers an insightful piece
by Kevin LaGrandeur about how ancient rhetoricians,
Aristotle, Gorgias, and Horace, can help
us "think about, to analyze the rhetorical
dimensions of . . . images" (117) while
Matthew Kirschenbaums "The Word as
Image in an Age of Digital Reproduction"
interrogates Stuart Moulthrops claim
that "the word is an image after all"(137),
from a rather limited perspectivehe
argues from the premise that the qualities
of text that Humanities Computing scholars
value and understand are the qualities that
must be found in images and should be valued
and understood by all other scholars (149).
The argument works this way: Images are
not texts because they do not behave as
texts do for Humanities Computing experts.
Essays in Part III, "Perception and Knowledge
in Visual and Verbal Texts" explore visual
rhetoric from the perspective of cognitive
studies. The most satisfying comment, perhaps
in the book, is made here by Nancy Barta-Smith
and Danette DiMarco in "Same Difference:
Evolving Conclusions about Textuality and
Media." In challenging claims about "shift
from print to visual writing
with the advent of new media capabilities"
(159), they say that "we may find that the
most revolutionary ideas about writing and
new media emerge as mixtures of existing
text, voice, and image, that is as evolving
combinations rather than definitive conclusions
about textuality and new media" (175). At
that moment, theirs are the voices of clarity.
The final section, "Identities and Cultures
in Digital Design," include essays relating
to feminist and cultural studies and VR.
Of these, Gail Hawisher and Patricia Sullivans
and Ellen Strain and Gregory VanHoosier-Careys
articles are the most useful to scholars.
In all, the books polyvocal, complex
approach to visual rhetoric makes for a
good text to follow or surplant those like
Nicholas Mirzoeffs An Introduction
to Visual Culture and will animate a
few scholars into energetic discussions
about images and words, eloquent or not.