Seeing and Knowing (Review of Johanna Drucker's Graphesis)

Johanna Drucker
Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production
Harvard University Press/metaLABprojects, 2014

If - as the old adage goes - it is only books that are talked about that are actually read, then I believe that it’s imperative we continue to talk about graphic design scholar Johanna Drucker’s latest work, Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production, for some time to come. Here, Drucker takes up the issues that she has been concerned with for the last twenty years, the study and interpretation of representational practices across media, though what distinguishes Graphesis is that the new work purports to be neither a history of visual knowledge nor a study of the importance of the visual image in digital media. Instead, it combines both issues as it seeks to offer an “outline of principles and precepts that structure visual forms of knowledge production and representation in graphic formats.” In other words, the book is an of-the-moment investigation of how and what “we” see relates to how and what “we” know, both historically and in a contemporary context.

Needless to say, such an investigation positions itself within several disciplines, including fields as diverse as graphic design, mathematics, geography, the natural sciences, rhetoric, and philosophy. Furthermore, since Drucker’s interdisciplinary approach amounts to a new field of inquiry, there is a great deal that needs to be explained regarding the rationale for - and terms of - her investigation. What that translates into in Graphesis, however, is that the “relevance” of Drucker’s claims are not immediately apparent; and so the book is not an “easy” read. Nevertheless, the relevance of Drucker’s investigation emerges. And Graphesis proves to be an immensely rewarding work for readers in the range of disciplines where Drucker touches ground, most notably, the digital humanities, rhetoric, art history, architecture, and media studies. Indeed, the work is an important contribution to the ongoing study of various issues in the digital humanities (including, the role and status of interpretation in information visualizations; the types, meanings, and functions of graphic abstractions; the implications of the use and importation of quantitative tools in fields traditionally dedicated to qualitative analysis). And despite its resistance to easy summation - or perhaps because of that fact - the book also serves as a model for the type of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry increasingly demanded in contemporary scholarship and criticism.

The title - *Graphesis -*marks the new ground the work seeks to establish. That is, it’s a neologism that can only be defined by the very phenomenon that the book is dedicated to investigating, namely the act and study of representation in graphical forms. The title clearly references “mimesis,” the act and study of the representations of reality, which situates Graphesis within in a tradition of philosophical inquiry - extending from Plato to Derrida. However, whereas Derrida is concerned, chiefly, with verbal language, Drucker attends to visual signs in communication and interpretative practices. By the dawn of the 21st century, Drucker argues, the visual domain - which includes tables, charts, maps, and diagrams - has reached a point of unparalledled significance. Concerned with defining what she calls, at various points, a “graphical language,” Drucker catalogues and draws attention to hundreds of important graphical artifacts produced over the last five thousand years that have contributed to the development of our contemporary grammar of graphic representation, communication, and interpretation. Drucker’s scope and command of her material is breathtaking (artifacts discussed include navigational, meteorological, mathematical, logical, philosophical, evolutionary, and biblical diagrams and maps from antiquity to the present day). The sheer ability to bring together such a disparate range or materials, alone, makes Graphesis a worthwhole read.

While Drucker’s analysis of both contemporary and historical artifacts is equally satisfying and rich, it’s ultimately her argument that data are never neutral but embed thousands of years of assumptions ithat has the widest applications and import - both to daily networked communications practices and to scholarly work in the still evolving field of the digital humanities. For some time now, Drucker has argued that the unreflexive use of visualization and information processing tools should be cause for serious concern for digital humanities scholars. In Graphesis, she fleshes out the rationale for that concern. In fact, after reading the book, it’s hard to imagine investigating a database table in quite the same way. In brief, Drucker suggests that if the table and its relationship to language was the preoccupation of many 20th century philosophers, the database table - and the assumptions embedded in it - should become one of the primary concerns for philosophers in the 21st century.

While I wish that Drucker’s analysis was more evenly balanced with the amount of information she presents, to fulfill that request would have made the book at least twice as long. Needless to say, I hope that Drucker will, in future work, continue to take up the claims she puts forward in Graphesis. The fact that her investigation doesn’t yet seem exhasted is, in large part, a compliment to the present work. But the work’s limits also points to some very real concerns about the state of current scholarship. Although the book is part of Harvard’s metaLABprojects series, which is not only dedicated to topics in the digital humanities but invites readers “to take part in reimagining print-based scholarship for the digital age,” the book is currently available only in print-based form. Whether a single-authored print monograph is the best medium for the presentation of Drucker’s project and whether the project would have benefitted from being one that was created and distributed via a digital platform that multiple authors could have contributed are issues that readers will inevitably encounter as they reflect on the artifacts presented and the theoretical, historical, and disciplinary issues that the book raises. These are, of course, questions that involve not only scholars but university presses, as well as university policies regarding tenure and promotion. I can only hope that Drucker’s impressive book may not onnly be an occasion for unpacking and exploring the wide range of topics and issues she addresses, but also for the actively considering how ongoing discussions and inquiries into these topics are curated, published, and distributed.