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Show 117 justifications for action performed in the name of the public" (pp. xi-xii). The problem with the ideograph, however, is that it assumes only humans are capable of shaping its meaning, and that these humans are rational, singular, and natural "symbolic animals" (Burke, 1969). Condit and Lucaites (1993) are quite explicit about this assumption in their diachronic analysis of equality in America's Anglo-African world, in a beautifully written book about the historic tensions, negotiations, and contestations of equality from the American Revolution to the "new equalities" of the 1960s. Using the heuristic tools of public argumentation and rhetorical culture, the authors take an Isocratic perspective that assumes "human collectivities" are motivated by the logos of "speech and reason" and that "rhetoric or public discourse functions as a pragmatic, political aesthetic, the artistic object of which is the lived…political world produced by and for a particular human collectivity" (p. xi). Assuming equality can only be achieved by human, rational actors problematically excludes an entire history of how corporations were also rhetorical actors that crafted the concept of equality in their struggles for equal protection of the law. To recognize the impact of corporate equalities, this author argues that the ideograph is more usefully understood from an actor-network perspective. There are three steps necessary to realize this argument. The Ideograph is an Irreducible Force First, the ideograph, like every other object, is irreducible to anything else, including structures of representation. As Latour (1984/1993) said: "we can perform, transform, deform, and thereby form and inform ourselves, but we cannot describe anything. In other words there is no representation, except in the theatrical or political senses of the term" (p. 228). The ideograph is irreducible; it is a force in utter singularity. |
