The Politics of the Superficial: Visual Rhetoric and the Protocol of Display PDF
Preview The Politics of the Superficial: Visual Rhetoric and the Protocol of Display
The Politics of the Superficial Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique Series Editor John Louis Lucaites Editorial Board Jeffrey A. Bennett Barbara Biesecker Carole Blair Joshua Gunn Robert Hariman Debra Hawhee Claire Sisco King Steven Mailloux Raymie E. McKerrow Toby Miller Phaedra C. Pezzullo Austin Sarat Janet Staiger Barbie Zelizer The Politics of the Superficial Visual Rhetoric & the Protocol of Display BRETT OMMEN THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS TUSCALOOSA The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2016 by the University of Alabama Press All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press. Typeface: Scala Pro Manufactured in the United States of America Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the min- imum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-8173-1918-2 E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-8993-2 For p.d. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Visual Colonization of Surface 1 1 Spanning Design’s Surface 15 2 First Things First: Graphic Design and Meaning 37 3 The Protocol of Display 58 4 The Public Chamber of Fear 79 5 The Politics of the Superficial 100 Conclusions and Caveats 121 Notes 133 Bibliography 149 Index 157 Acknowledgments F or the entirety of my career, my work has been described by its somewhat odd position among the various fields of Communication Stud- ies. It is not classical rhetoric, not design studies, not media studies, and not cultural studies, but something a bit like all those things. In retrospect, it is apparent that my work falls in between the comfortable seats of scholarship. My best ideas have always come in the carved-out, in-between spaces of aca- demia. I do not point this out to suggest that I am some kind of maverick. I mean instead to demonstrate that my work and ideas have benefited from the charity and the company of a wide range of people who were looking for the same intellectual alcoves. This project would not exist but for the encouragement of some of my old- est friends, who eschewed the high school cafeteria in order to eat lunch in the storage spaces of the band room. This project would not exist but for the support of my Northwestern University writing cohort, who worked out of the forgotten spaces in the attic of the Hardy House. This project would not exist but for the feedback and conversations of my former colleagues in the University of North Dakota’s Working Group in Digital and New Media. My work, here and elsewhere, depends on the kind of collaborative community that seems to develop in adjacent or interstitial spaces. If you find that this book does not seem to dwell in any particular disciplinary position for very long, you have my apologies. But I want to thank all my friends and peers who showed me the possibilities of eschewing the comfortable seat in favor of the comfortable space—even when that space is hard to find. All romantic reflection aside, I want to thank Dilip Gaonkar, Robert Hari- man, and Keith Topper for their invaluable feedback and guidance as I devel- oped this project at Northwestern University. I want to thank my peers who talked and read and inspired me in the early phases of the project: Leslie
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