Abacadabra

 

The funny aspect about this trick is that there’s really no “trick”—it’s just based on mathematics. Even the person perpetuating the card trick may not understand the “how” behind it all. Yet to an uninformed (and naïve) observer, the trick gives the illusion that “magic” actually is involved. True to my little quirkiness, I thought this card trick was similar to the topics addressed in Stephen Bernhardt’s Seeing the Text, Anne Wysocki’s The Multiple Media of Texts:How Onscreen and Paper Texts Incorporated Words, Images, and Other Media, and Gunther Kress’ Multimodality, Multimedia,and Genre.

All three writers mention, in varying degrees, the rhetorical function of a text’s appearance. In fact, one of the assumptions underlying Wysocki’s argument was that “the visual elements and arrangements of a text perform persuasive work” (124). I know that we’ve discussed different aspects of rhetoric all throughout this semester, but when I think of rhetoric, the words finesse and persuasion still dominantly come to my mind. If we view rhetoric in a very vulgar light, we might even say it is a form of “trickery.” But on the other hand, can we really say that visual rhetoric is a “trick”? I guess it depends on your opinion of whether a trick (as in a magic trick) is mostly done in full sight of the observer or during the “preparation” stages before the “performance.” In other words, does a trick hinge more on (manipulated) audience perception or the craft of the magician? How you answer these questions might influence you how view the concept of visual rhetoric. For example, do you think visual rhetoric is mostly based on details such as type font/size, images, white space, page layout, and the like? If your answer is “yes,” this correlates to the perception gimmick that is “in full sight of the observer.” Or do you think there is something else to visual rhetoric, something that might correspond to the unseen, “preparation” part of a magic trick? In regards to this “unseen” aspect of visual rhetoric, I would like to posit that the effectiveness of visual rhetoric is due in part to the constraints of the rhetorical discourse.

If I remember correctly, we’ve defined the constraints of a rhetorical discourse as persons, events, or objects that have the power to limit the decision/action needed to modify the rhetorical exigence. In light of this, couldn’t a reader’s expectations be a type of constraint? As writers, we oftentimes write to the expectations of our intended audience. “These multiple considerations of audience and purpose functionally constrain the text, influencing its shape and structure” (Bernhardt 71). Wysocki also stated, “Precisely because you come to an academic page bringing expectations about how that page should look means that the page has had to be visually designed to fit your expectations” (124). For example, a scientific paper may be more rhetorically effective if it appears to be a scientific, peer-reviewed paper rather than a high school research project. Theoretically, it shouldn’t matter what a text appears like if its content is reliable, but realistically, we all “judge a book by its cover”!

Therefore, if the appearance of a text can work rhetorically in the text’s favor, then the concept of genre becomes all the more important to consider. Kress wrote, “[T]he category of genre is essential in all attempts to understand text, whatever its modal composition. The point is to develop a theory and terms adequate to that” (39).  In one respect, understanding and categorizing different genres can be useful; as demonstrated in Wysocki, Bernhadt, and Kress’ analyses of visual aspects of text, different displays could carry entirely different meanings. A true “master” of magic knows the “ins and outs” of the trade, unlike someone like me, who may utilize mathematical card tricks without actually taking the time to understand what makes them work. Similarly, someone who composes a text with full awareness as to its visual implications would probably make a better rhetorician than someone who is ignorant of the rhetorical, visual tools at their disposal. However, the issue with so closely defining different genres is that, as Kress pointed out, we don’t know what to do with those “generic mixes.” Kress proposed,

A newer way of thinking may be that within a general awareness of the range of genres…speakers and writers newly make the generic forms out of available resources. This is a much more “generative” notion of genre: not one where you learn the shapes of existing kinds of text alone, in order to replicate them, but where you learn the generative rules of the constitution of generic form within the power structures of a society…In such a theory all acts of representation are innovative, and creativity is the normal process of representation for all. (53-54)

Maybe we are so consumed with the little details that we forget to step back and view the entire picture, so to speak, about the notion of genres. Returning to the subject of magic tricks, this summer my siblings and I watched the movie, “Now You See Me.” One of the main themes was, “The closer you look, the less you’ll really see.” So what do you see? “The physical fact of the text, with its spatial appearance on the page, requires visual apprehension: a text can be seen, must be seen…” (Bernhadt 66).