The turn toward the visual, then, represents a disciplinary revolution toward, and perhaps in, political rhetoric. Indeed, one might look to the 1970 Wingspread Conference as the starting point of the visual turn in rhetorical studies. The Prospect of Rhetoric . Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, eds. Raymond Howes, ed.
Visibilities create a way of knowing irreducible to words and statements.
Thus, the visible should not be equated with a visible object. See Gilles Deleuze, Foucault . Sean Hand, trns. This is not to suggest that functional forms of visual rhetoric necessarily displace formalism and hermeneutics. On the contrary, close reading offers a way to get at both the traces and residues of power.