”To emphasize the rhetorical nature of ekphrasis is also to draw attention to the vestigial orality of the phenomenon, the way in which the discussions of both ekphrasis and enargeia assume live interactions between speaker and audience, with language passing like an electrical charge between them.” (Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persusation in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009), p. 129)

‘A Visual Sense is Born in the Fingertips’. Towards a Definition of Ekphrasis for the Digital Age

This paper aims at rethinking the concept of ekphrasis with a special focus on how digital technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures the dynamic relationship between word and image. According to Ruth Webb in her Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (2009), the ancient and rhetorical practice of ekphrasis and the concept used in modern literary criticism belong to fundamentally different systems. The ancient definition emphasizes enargeia and the impact on the listener. The visual referent is less important. The modern definition of the term, developed for the analysis of written texts, engages with the visual mainly as referent. In this paper the significance of the ancient definition of ekphrasis will be re-examined through digital art and electronic literature. It will be argued that the ekphrasis of the digital age, with its emphasis on enargeia and on the viewer/reader/user-bodily interaction with the work of art convey an aesthetic of tactility. Also to be discussed is how deeply rooted the notion of ekphrasis is in print based texutality.

Ekfrase: Nordisk tidskrift för visuell kultur

Last week at the conference Writing in a Post-Derridean Era at Växjö University with the paper Digital Ekphrasis. Word/image-relations in the age of the computer, a connection between the transitory aspect of digital text that Derrida describes in Paper Machine and the Quintilian notion of ekphrasis – staging a performance aiming at enargeia – was made. In the Quintilian notion ekphrasis performs that which it represents and the digital ekphrasis in computerized novels and electronic literature oscillates between inside – outside – inside. This could be further elaborated on with Derrida’s critique of the Kantian notion that a painting or sculpture can be subdivided into ergon and parerga - the workand its supplement (in the form of framing, drapery or other borders). Derrida writes in The Truth in Painting: “A parergon comes against, beside, and in addition to the ergon, the done (fait), the fact, the work, but it does not fall to one side, it touches and cooperates within the operation, from a certain outside” (1978:54) Digital Ekphrasis, its historical origins and philosophical development throughout the centuries, could serve as a means of exploring the innovation of digital technologies and word/image-relations in particular.