what is visual rhetoric

Somewhere between Barthe’s ideas of studium and punctum and Blaire’s philosophies on what actually makes up visual rhetoric rests what visual rhetoric exactly is. It seems to me to be most like the Affect— like that flash we feel in our gut in regards to what a particular image does to us physically and emotionally before our brain grabs hold of it and starts plastering it with constrictive labels. Why are we so compelled to look at a particular image? What is that form of communication before language traps it, wrapping it up neatly in a box? Language is often inadequate and it seems once again to prove true when I look at an image and feel a soft oomph or sigh or even a scream somewhere inside me that I can’t describe— it’s so deep that all I can do is feel. Somewhere in this label-less realm I think the definition of visual rhetoric resides. Images have a way of reeling through our minds faster than words. This propels them with what I believe is a communication more powerful than words. In what might take a poet, or narrator a page to accurately describe (and even then will surely leave the reader open to her own interpretation between the lines) an image speaks in a raw, truthful fashion unique onto itself. What an image makes someone feel can be individual to that person and their own culture and memories— but it is in the making someone feel something in .5 seconds that is unique unto the visual. Defining visual rhetoric is tricky. Most hold rhetoric’s definition loosely to “the art of persuasion.” If this is true, than visual rhetoric is speaking to our desires, speaking to our wants and impulses in a sneaky fashion that can catch us off guard faster than non-visual rhetoric. This is all speculation on my end, because rhetoric…and especially visual rhetoric seem to be all around us. It is not just the obvious propaganda, it’s the subtle influence. It’s the whispers into our subconscious asking us what we basically want.