![]() ![]() ![]() Each new medium uses these two modes in one way or another. T Mitchell implies that the division between image and text has always been illusory ( Iconology 46). Just as context and text are inseparable, visual and verbal modes have become inextricable-or rather, have been revealed to have always been at best difficult to distinguish. Similarly, both words and images are almost meaningless without context. Neuroscience teaches us that ideas are not localizable within the brain but are created by neural connections (Damasio). For most of us, thought resides in the communication across this fissure. This division may indeed be hardwired into our brains, the verbal left hemisphere coupled to the visual right hemisphere by the corpus callosum. These are chosen not at random but as a means of approaching the question sidelong. Throughout this nexus, I choose two centers and watch them move: visual and verbal. Alt-scholarship is a chance to make a “ ragoût,” to borrow Barbara Cassin's term. As may seem obvious, the center lies in the middle, between not with a finis on each side, the limits waiting to be defined, but between other, older centers, centers that have been left out. I, however, am interested not in defining this change, in finding its limits, but rather in decentering it, both laying down and (re)moving its center. In this page, I'd like to point to a narrative that doesn't get enough attention: the feminist roots of alt-scholarship. And during these changes, there is a danger of us embracing easy narratives of progress or decline. Sometimes it is a technological renaissance, other times a paradigm shift. The digital revolution, the advent of visual literacy, cool media, it is called by many names. Our visual environment is becoming more and more rich.
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