Connections between key terms from Gane and Beer’s New Media (2008) and Brooke’s Lingua Fracta (2009)

• Network: connections must be made / linked between the new concepts and old / previous concepts. We don’t learn in isolation; we learn by association.  Gane and Beer (2008) reference this type of ideology as it pertains to computer connections specifically and to social interactions implicitly: “The key point to take from this is that a network is not a single structural form, for in practice networks may have quite different architectures or topologies. Moreover, for any network to operate smoothly a set of standards or protocols  is needed to enable different machines and devices to communicate with each other” (Kindle p. 17).

• Information:  Delagrange’s focus on enabling classroom rhetorical practices to convey information in multiple formats follows Gane and Beer’s (2008) discussion of informatics. They say, “In sum, informatics refers to the inseparability of information from a range of material settings and practices” (Kindle p. 44). One of Delagrange’s focal points is the fact that allowing the visual to be added to the “formal essay” provides another layer of information, connecting the medium to the message.

• Interface: Her discussion of the canon of arrangement touches on the aspect of interface. She says, “I want to argue here that digital remediation opens up a new (virtual/material) space within which to re-imagine the canon of arrangement, not as concerned merely with the order of written and spoken discourse, but as a visual practice, a techne’   of discovery and representation, that takes on many of the rhetorical tasks formerly performed by delivery” (58) which sounds very similar to Brooke’s (2009) proposal of “a shift from text to interface” (7).  Delagrange argues, “Furthermore, re-arrangement becomes a strategic practice through which to discover new relationships among the available images and texts, to literally see new ways of looking at a suddenly lively rhetorical situation” (58).

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  By Stephen Slade Tien (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

  
  

  Interactivity: page 126 – one of the essential qualities that a wunderkammer must possess. “[I]n digital media [interactivity] includes both the means to manipulate and arrange evidence to discover meaningful associations and analogies, and the ability to navigate freely among the nodes and links of the evidence to build multilinear, mutiperspectival understanding and knowledge” (126). Such a quality allows the user / viewer to in some ways become co-author. Gane and Beer (2008) discuss the benefit of interactivity but they scrutinize the overuse of the term because many things which are labeled as “interactive” are not really as “manipulatable” as people claim (87). In order for students to learn, Delagrange would like their research to be interactive, but her push in the classroom is for students to be able to produce rhetoric which includes images, not specifically rhetoric that creates an interactive environment for others.

• Rhetorical Canon: Delagrange discusses delivery, arrangement, and style in her focus on how digital interface provides options for delivering information (57-58). She also focuses an entire section on “Visualizing the Canon” in which she argues against the perceived idea of a linear formation of information following the classical canons (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery); instead she wants to encourage the use of these canons as a more “recursive conversation” which does not separate content from form (109-112).

• Proairesis: Techne’ defined as “making” (35) connects it to proairesis. Brooke (2009) describes one part of proairesis as “the participation of readers and audiences in the construction of meaning” (62). Delagrange describes techne’ using similar terminology from Brooke’s discussion of proairesis: “it is a recursive process of invention that resists the conventional and conservative” (37).

• Performance:  Delagrange proposes a change in the performance of situated knowledge within new media/digital media

  • “Feminism can ask questions about what counts as knowledge and who can produce such knowledge” (Delagrange 13). Not only are women able to perform in this instance, but the works themselves perform in different ways and on different levels.

  • “By  arguing for hypermediacy, and the insight it provides about the way in which the desire for an immediate, transparent experience disadvantages women and other under-represented groups, we can move toward a multimediated feminist rhetorical practice in new media that gives ‘better accounts of the world’” (Delagrange 16)

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