Stay close, this is about to get tricky...

There is no unfiltered reality.

Doug spoke these words a few weeks back, and they stuck with me.  If I attempt to unite Mishra, Wolf, and McCloud, it would be around the principle of mediation.  Everything is filtered, affected, changed, and situated; all knowledge depends on the reader, society, culture, and certainly numerous unknown factors to reach its actualization.   We live in a messy world, but excitement lies in the prospect of slowly unraveling one tangle at a time, going around in circles and through loops, until perhaps we unravel and understand just enough to wield it.  Reading these three authors I recognize there will always be more—more situations to analyze, more texts, more technologies, more people, etc.   Wisdom is not a status of complete comprehension and mastery, but rather the constant state of mindfulness and attention; someone who has seen enough to know that something new always hides around the bend, out of sight until you get there.  In conjunction, Mishra quotes: “We are most revealed in what we do not scrutinize” (p. 141).  So let’s do some looking.

On Mishra:

At this, my mind did a double-take: “While pictorial subject

matter is alien to written discourse, and requires a reduction to make it amenable to analysis, written subject matter can be iterated without any “gap” within the textual surface that analyzes it.” (p. 140).

What does it imply, that our analysis of image is almost always verbal?  Can we really “get at” the core of rhetorical images if our criticism always brings the pictorial back into the realm of language?  Are we losing another form of analysis?  I cannot say what, or how, just that when attempting to understand something, we can constrain it through the forms of comprehension we choose.  Wolf would seem to reinforce this, through the conversation on simulators.  “Computers that automatically inspect events are limited by the expectations of programmers.  Such systems can selectively suppress information or obscure unusual phenomena.” (p. 121).  If we consider our minds a form of simulator, reproducing and recreating the world “out there” for us “in here,” then certain aspects of our processing process (yes, no typo) can unknowingly constrain us, just like lines of code which expect a result can unwittingly filter out information not fitting its expectation.  Language comes with its own set of restrictions (and naturally, great benefits), and I wonder if we shouldn’t be practicing other forms of analyzing alongside the verbal. 

*Checks syllabus…sees photo essay.*  Perfect, that’s exactly what I mean.

McCloud writes, “Communication is only effective when we understand the forms that communication can take.” (p. 198).  So many languages circulate out there, from the language of technology to computer code to subtractive color to medical lingo.  And every language is weighted, bringing its own set of biases and assumptions to the conversation, implicit in its very constructions and jargon.  McCloud talks about the communication wall, that all expression is an attempt to reconcile the truth that we cannot communicate mind-to-mind.  So we create these different languages to attempt to communicate, such as the graphic novel.  But once an art or discourse is in motion, it often takes on its own life, and just like a simulator or computer code, starts acting somewhat on its own, outside our realm of control.

Which is "authentic?"  This...

And this is where we should pay attention—where, in our battle to communicate, something slipped our notice and became implicit, like a genre convention, an unspoken rule, an implied value, etc.   Anytime we make motions to communicate, we enter the abstract world that Wolf discusses, where words, images, simulations, etc. become approximations of “reality.”  Sometimes this approximation can be labeled “inauthentic” as in the case of color-coded anatomical diagrams, but what actually constitutes “authenticity?”  Is it the extent to which something reflects the experience, or the extent to which it reflects the current purpose, conventions, and social/academic situation?  

...or this?

Mishra throws a word out too often—“misconceptions.”  All these students have these awful misconceptions, I keep hearing in the text.  But then, Mishra seems to prove the opposite—that these "misconceptions” were gained through common imagery.  Can one really label something a “misconception” then, if it is a direct result of interacting with and observing, the result of experiencing?  What’s at stake is the master “concept,” what constitutes “reality.”  And as long as we keep viewing “reality” as a fixed nature we seek out, time and time again we will fall short, our codes unable to process the vast variety of experience that is.