box) is the product. The Not a Box is an example of no-waste packaging; as such, it functions to raise awareness of sustainable practices. The rhetorical message embodied and performed by the Not a Box might be paraphrased as we need to (and can!) find creative ways to avoid waste.
Figure 1. David Graas’s Not a Box. Photograph by Tim Stet. © 2010 David Graas. Used by permission.
Traditional models of rhetorical theory and pedagogy are of limited use in helping to facilitate a critical reading of the Not a Box. The rhetorical success of the Not a Box cannot be accounted for based on compositional considerations alone. It’s a simple cardboard lamp, a novelty item. Imagine that the Not a Box was submitted by a student in response to the assignment, Produce a composition that helps raise awareness about sustainable practices. Teachers who sought out the message of the Not a Box through the usual methods—by examining the composition—would be forced to conclude that there was no message. The Not a Box would certainly receive a failing grade.
It is only when one takes into account how the lamp was distributed—that the lamp was its own package, and therefore generated zero waste—that the Not a Box communicates a socially relevant message. This case points to the relationship between composition and distribution—between the message and how that message travels through material-cultural contexts. In this case, composition anticipates circulation. Graas didn’t design a lamp and then inquire into how it could be shipped. He first inquired how it could be shipped and then created a design that exploited that process. Considerations of composition follow considerations of distribution.
As we map a theory and pedagogy of multimodal public rhetoric, we find that it is essential to revise models of rhetorical invention so that they adequately account for the relationship between composing and the processes of reproduction and distribution that happen when the composition is done. While the relationship between composition and distribution is particularly pronounced in the case of Graas’s Not a Box, we contend that this relationship is always an essential one. Based on cases we explore below, we go one step further, claiming that the composing process is exceeded by the rhetorical process. The work of rhetors is not done when the composition is done, but continues in the labor rhetors invest in processes of circulation.
Case #3: “Cotton Patch” (Or, The Latourian Mystery of Page 48)
Our third case is a bit more involved. It concerns a New Deal-era theatrical vignette called “Cotton Patch,” as explored by theater historian Ann Folino White. Belonging to the “living newspaper” genre, “Cotton Patch” offers a theatrical rendering of current issues of the day. Specifically, it focuses on the irony that results when government programs undermine each other. An African-American farmer named Sam has received a mule through a government loan program, but because Sam owes taxes, a sheriff is sent to repossess the mule. As the sheriff leads the mule away, he asks Sam what the animal’s name is. “Guv’ment,” Sam replies—a gesture that, according to White, “characterizes the Roosevelt Administration a jackass” (246). “Cotton Patch,” White concludes, “represents the national situation as inane” (247). In many ways, then, “Cotton Patch” conforms to a standard model of public rhetoric; it is a vehicle used by citizens to critique social issues of common concern.
“Cotton Patch” appeared as part of Triple-A Plowed Under, a production of the Federal Theatre Project, one of the arts programs sponsored by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. It premiered on March 14, 1936 at New York City’s Biltmore Theatre, but was cut from Triple-A after opening night and was not included in subsequent Biltmore performances. According to White, the only direct explanation for the cut can be found on Page 48 of an archived copy of the script, which contains a typed note from Director Joseph Losey:
We are not using this scene as it was impossible to get actors to play it with the necessary simplicity. The scene is conceived to be played entirely without props, with vaudeville technique, but not to be played up or plugged. If this scene is to be used, it should be played in front of a cyclorama [i.e., a neutral screen often used as a backdrop] framed with blacks [i.e., black curtains], and the subsequent Sharecropper Scene, should be played in front of Blacks. (qtd. in White 244)
White’s account takes the form of a detective story. The mystery concerns why “Cotton Patch” was cut from Triple-A, and the note from Joseph Losey is the principal clue. White examines this clue from a variety of angles, offering various possible interpretations, but none of these interpretations is altogether satisfying; the mystery is ultimately unsolvable. We could, for instance, take Losey at his word and assign blame to the actors. This becomes problematic, however, when one considers that the script itself seems to demand a comedic style derived from conventions of “light minstrel comedy” (246). Sam’s character is established through song, pantomime, and “stereotypic dialect that abounds in ‘sho’nuffs’ and syntactical disorder,” making it difficult to reconcile with Losey’s direction that the scene is “not to be played up or plugged” (246). The script, actors, and director seem to be at odds with each other.
While the case of “Cotton Patch” uses the traditional tools of theater rather than the digital tools of new media, it illustrates the important reality that multimodal public rhetoric often emerges from a complex network: multiple actors, multiple technologies, multiple discourses, and multiple semiotic resources. Traditional models of rhetorical production tend to emphasize stable relations between rhetor (usually a single, rational, autonomous subject), message, and audience, but the mystery of Page 48 points to the limitations of this model. Page 48 is mysterious, as White cleverly shows, because it lies at the intersection of a hundred threads in a material-cultural-performative-semiotic web that includes various collaborators (director, writers, actors, stage designers, and audience members), theatrical genres (vaudeville, minstrelsy, political satire, and other dramatic forms), and staging technologies (cyclorama, black curtains, and no props). “Cotton Patch” cannot be theorized in terms of a single rhetor’s purposeful actions. Instead, “Cotton Patch” emerges from a complex network of human and nonhuman agents. In chapter 5 we draw on actor-network theorists like Bruno Latour, John Law, and others to explore the distributed nature of rhetorical agency.
The case of “Cotton Patch” also reveals that ethical issues are often at stake in rhetors’ struggles to confront multiple contingencies. In this case, a failure to effectively choreograph a constellation of human and nonhuman actors could result in the promotion of racist perceptions. If the actors, with guidance from the director, do not effectively transmediate the script provided by the writers, the portrayal of rural African-Americans will slip from productive social commentary to the pernicious representational practices of minstrelsy. While representational ethics are implicated in all rhetorical actions, many of the challenges here derive precisely from the multimodal and distributed nature of the performance: the particular configuration of disparate elements of theatrical production (song, dance, props, make-up, costumes, and performed script). As we map a theory and pedagogy of multimodal public rhetoric, then, we find it crucial to confront a set of peculiar ethical considerations raised by multimodality.
Mapping a Theory and Pedagogy of Multimodal Public Rhetoric
We begin, in chapter 1, with a discussion of kairos and public sphere, two keywords that will inform our exploration of multimodal public rhetoric throughout this book. Kairos is often defined as “the opportune moment,” but this is shorthand for a complex and generative concept that helps us accomplish three major objectives: (1) to explore certain aspects of the rhetorical context that have often been overlooked; (2) to adopt a critically reflective disposition toward new possibilities in a given situation that may not conform to received wisdom; and (3) to examine not just the efficaciousness of various rhetorical responses, but ethical dimensions as well.
Equally generative, the public sphere has come to signify a social space for addressing “issues of common concern.” Public sphere, however,
