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Identity & Ornamentation

In his work Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric, Doug Eyman frames Visual Rhetoric as more than just looking at pictures, but instead as a way of understanding how everything from a toaster to the differing autism community symbol can communicate power, identity and culture.

To the casual onlooker, my laptop is a chaotic collage of rainbow leopards, coffee cups, and political ideologies. Through the lens of visual rhetoric, these aren’t just stickers. They’re my own curated archive. According to Meredith Zoetewey, these ” objects of inscription” are a way to code my laptop to speak for me before I ever type a word. My laptop has become a document I present to the world, utilizing it as a way to communicate my culture, history, and identity.

This “rhetoric of the image” is something Roland Barthes would call a connotative signifier of ideology. By placing Black Lives Matter stickers directly alongside the whimsical glow of Lisa Frank dolphins, I am engaging in a visual hybrid that mirrors my own life as a young mixed raced woman born in the 90’s. I not only share my politics but also my identity, culture, and history. These symbols anchor my identity. The playful aesthetics don’t diminish my the political statements, instead humanizing them bridging the gaps between serious cultural discourse and a vibrant energy I bring to my creative endeavors.

My Political Science major has often taught me to analyze power through policy, but I find myself inclined to analyze through the visual.