Reading :: Engaging Ambience

 Engaging Ambience: Visual and Multisensory Methodologies and Rhetorical Theory

by Brian McNely

When I saw that this book was coming out, I emailed Brian my congratulations and let him know I had preordered it. He replied by thanking me, but saying he wasn’t sure how relevant it would be to me. 

Having read it, I sort of see what he meant — the book is written more or less in conversation with Heidegger, as a new materialist approach involving visual and sensory research. Moreover, it is written in the evocative style of ethnographers such as Annemarie Mol, a style that I find … florid, perhaps? Still, I found the book valuable and thought-provoking. 

McNely’s opening question, interpolating Barad, is “How and why … does matter come to matter in rhetoric?” (p.1). That is, how do “things, moods, sensations, feelings, and their combined effects” ground “suasive events”? (p.1). And if they do ground those events, “how do we go about studying [a materialist rhetoric] systematically — with something more rigorous than thought experiments?” (p.9). To do this, he draws on Heidegger and Husserl for theory and Gries, Barnett, and others in rhetoric for methodologies. “Methodologies are not appended to theories,” he adds: “They enact theories, values, and philosophies; enliven theoretical understanding; and reciprocally extend the development of theory. In short, methodologies are ways of doing theory, such that theory and practice are inseparable and mutually constitutive” (p.17). 

With that background, McNely goes on to explore several cases: a student-led software development studio; three media researchers interpreting focus group sessions; a Roman Catholic eucharistic procession; and, finally, his own autoethnographic study of his walks to and from campus. In each, he explores the sets of experiences, affects, signifiers, and (of course) writing technologies at play, writing evocatively about the experiences of his participants and himself, and putting his photographs front and center. These cases are amplified by McNely’s clear writing and storytelling throughout. Although each case is small in scale, McNely goes deeply into each, drawing ably on new materialist theory to help us understand their complexities. 

Should you pick up this book? If you’re thinking through methodology or ambient rhetorics or new materialism — and certainly if you’re doing all three — definitely give it a read.

A tribute to Bill Hart-Davidson

Yesterday I got a call from a mutual friend, telling me that Bill Hart-Davidson had passed away. I was shocked. 

Bill and I had known each other since at least 1999, when both of us received our PhDs and went on the job market. In the very early 2000s, we were put on the same SIGDOC panel along with Mark Zachry, and the three of us got to talking afterwards. (I already knew Mark well, since he had been my office mate at Iowa State). Soon the three of us began collaborating, writing a streak of conference papers from 2006-2012 and conducting research about our shared interest in how people communicate and mediate their work via texts. 

We stopped our regular collaborations after 2012, as each of us began pursuing other research interests. But we still made a point to see each other at conferences and to seek counsel for sticky problems. In fact, the last time I contacted Bill, it was to thank him for some feedback he gave on an article I was trying to write.

Since we were the same age, we did a lot of things in tandem. For instance, I remember talking to him at SIGDOC 2007 (El Paso) about the fact that I had begun ashtanga yoga to get back in shape. He had recently begun biking for health reasons. Around that time, we both picked up bass guitar -- although he stuck with it and I didn't. We both became involved in our departments' digital writing labs. And eventually we both picked up service obligations, with Bill becoming the Associate Dean of Research & Graduate Education at his university.

But we diverged in other ways. While I am introverted, Bill was always outgoing and deeply interested in people -- qualities that made him a great teacher, but also a great leader. He did a stint in Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) leadership and became an ATTW Fellow. While I was researching entrepreneurship from a safe distance, he became an entrepreneur, co-inventing Eli Review: peer review software that is now being used at colleges and universities. Bill was endlessly interested in how to push the field forward, and as a result, he seemed to know everyone -- and at least a little bit about everything -- in it.

So Bill touched a lot of people's lives -- as an outstanding professor, an associate dean, an entrepreneur, a bass player, and on and on. He was always gracious, always enthusiastic about people's projects, and always focused on amplifying what worked rather than tearing down what didn't. Our field has lost someone really vital -- but more importantly, all of us have lost a good friend. I just can't believe he's gone.