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.