Sticky Fingers

Hmmm. I actually found that "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" reinforced a lot of what has already been expressed (in a good way) about decentering and denaturalizing and directed it at visual arguments and aesthetics, in general. Rather than seeing it as an argument against universals, per se, I saw it as situating what are perceived to be universals temporally and socially (conventions do exist at a given place and time) so as to then show how these wrongly-perceived universals can be used strategically. The way Wysocki describes "what then is needed" is to say that of course "there is a certain necessity to effective visual composition because a design must fit a viewer's expectations if it is to make sense... but if design is to have any sense of possibility--of freedom--to it, then it must also push against the conventions, the horizons, of those expectations" (172). Wysocki advocates a pedagogy that will encourage students "to learn the social and temporal expectations of visual composition so that they can, eventually, perhaps, change some of the results of those expectations" (ibid). This might sound like a naive goal to many, but I think Wysocki is on to something--and she explains how she operationalizes the process in her classes. From 172-3:

I do not start my teaching with design principles, then, but rather by asking people in classes to collect and sort through and categorize compositions of all kinds, to try to pull "principles" out of those compositions and their experiences. One result is that... they can see the limitations and contingencies of... design principles... But, also, when people in these classes then make their own visual compositions, they understand that there are principles and why they need to follow them (in order to fit with the learned expectations of their audiences, not because there are universal, neutral forms) but they are also then aware they can--and often should--push against the principles. They see how the visual compositions they make embody particular aspects of themselves, that what they make are not objects for contemplation by others but rather reciprocal communications, shaping both composer and reader and establishing relationships among them.

For me, then, a big part of Wysocki's argument is that as a teacher she wants to denaturalize visual rhetoric for her students, that she does this by having them engage already-existing visual rhetoric to more-or-less deconstruct it and find the "principles" that are assumed so that they can then push the boundaries and challenge these codes; but she also emphasizes to her students that it's important for them to be literate in these forms--for them to be able to strategically use them in their own works because that is what is expected and that's they way to engage others in the lived world. For me, this is analogous to my assignment on Standard English--first I denaturalize the concept and show how arbitrary its origins are, then I foreground why it's still important socioeconomically for students to be able to use it strategically (and why, then, English 1000 is something they should be all about). They can then use that knowledge to push the boundaries or, perhaps, blow them up altogether (Audre Lorde’s assertion that “You can’t break down the master’s house with the master’s tools" informs my assessment here).

Any way, I gotta go--me and Will have the same landlord and she's knocking on the door. Speaking of that, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is the fourth track on Sticky Fingers, which leads back to the "sticky embrace" of the essay. It's all connected. So, without further ado, for your consideration--since I posted my own visual argument last week--here instead is Andy Warhol's visual argument for Mick Jagger's crotch:



Vis-a-vis a very different visual experience elicited by the cover issued for Sticky Fingers when the Warhol version was banned in Spain:



Same album (read: "composition"), but the visual "argument" about what the album is made by each cover differs dramatically; one embodies sex; the other, violence.