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April 20, 2005
Graphesis as epistemic shift?
I liked this article. Drucker is one smart lady. But I found myself wondering about just how epistemic graphesis is or can be. As described in the article, graphesis seems to be a method developed staunchly within this cultural and intellectual moment – a way of reclaiming form in a poststructuralist context. But I kept wanting more. I wanted to see this as a way to enable an epistemic shift, and I am not sure if that is what was intended, nor is desired from this method.
She states that in her article she intends to:
. . .create a critical framework within which the forms that are generally used for the presentation of information can be understood and read as culturally coded expressions of knowledge with their own epistemological assumptions and historical lineage. (2)
What is really neat about this is that her method and analyses throughout the article seem to be incorporating structuralism as well as post structural modes of analysis. This is a move that has been lacking in the humanities because, as she states, often our analyses focus on a single aspect with in the production of the text (e.g. the creative context, the receptive context, the form of the text) rather than the multiple layers of meaning and context which produce The Text in its entirety.
Rather than seeing the form as the mere tool or invisible transmitter of meaning, in graphesis, the form becomes just as much a part of the meaning as the conditions in which the text ways produced. (I am thinking of Derek's post here – the way we read and make meaning is largely influenced by how the text is formatted on the page, in the book, by our bedside table, etc.) So for Drucker, graphesis is a way to begin to find a method to speak of all of these intricate moments of meaning making as a whole. Or at least make them visible by stripping or changing the mostly invisible formatting choices we currently use. I like this. It seems productive.
But, my question about this article still remains. Can graphesis mark an epistemic shift? Can it show us something new that we have yet to see more than traditional textual forms? I am not sure. When I visited Kartoo this week, I was struck by how much sense its visualization of my topic (immigration) made. Much more than goggle scattershot hit ranking method of information. Taking in context, geography, state practices, advocacy groups, and then laying out how these connected with one another made all the sense in the world to me. It is like work that I try to do with information when I need to sort it. So, is graphesis (at least in this scenario) thinking for me or validating my own presumptions? Or perhaps I would have never connected those particular dots? So I see how Kartoo was giving me a new way of knowing information, but can I say that it shifts how I know completely? Hmmmm . . . still not sure on that one.
Posted by jlwingar at April 20, 2005 04:42 PM
Comments
As an end in itself, Jen, I'm not sure graphesis triggers an epistemic shift. But I would say that visualization methods complicate our presumptions about reading, comprehension, and interactions with texts most common in humanities disciplines (reading as a given practice). That it both simplifies (rendering a map or tree, for example) and, in turn, complicates (as long as, with it, we return to our presumptions about meaning) bears on its promise for me. I guess I'm just saying that I want to think of graphesis as an intervention or complication rather than an end. Does this disctinction relate to its potential to cause the kinds of shifts you're thinking of?
Posted by: Derek at April 20, 2005 06:21 PM
Yes it does. I guess that I see it working in exactly the way you describe, but for some reason (and her comes my humanities bias) I want graphics and differing textual representations to almost rupture sedimented systems. But intervention is good.
Posted by: jenwingard at April 20, 2005 07:41 PM
Maybe the rupture comes in the form of (or related mix of) stuff like Simon Evans' projects--the designs we saw at the SFMOMA. If computational renderings of discourse-as-data give us visualization, the rhetorical act of making the visualization into something more rupturous might be allowed if we take it on as the thing we do. Ruptures are possible in writing, why not graphically?
Posted by: Derek at April 20, 2005 09:05 PM
It seems to me that "graphesis" is a description of the overall process of representing information in graphic form. The responsibility for an epistemic shift or rupture would fall to a particular form of representation. In short, one would have to invent a graphic form that sees information in new way. However, in some cases, even conventional forms have the potential to transform our sense of the world, like mapping cancer clusters against industrial waste sites. I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are getting at.
Posted by: hj at April 20, 2005 11:43 PM