Expanding the framework of rhetorical circulation: an approach to online symbolic accretion through the rhizomorph

ABSTRACTOn October 18, 2019, members of the Colombian Army covered a highly visible mural with white paint. The mural depicted the Army’s active and retired generals who are allegedly responsible for extrajudicial executions committed by their subordinates in the 2000s. The Army’s efforts failed; in attempting to make the mural invisible, the Army ensured the mural’s visibility through online circulation. In this article, I describe the rhizomatic emergence of the image in the digital space through different forms and articulations as a challenge to the Army’s intention to screen out a narrative in the physical landscape. I argue that the circulation of the image and its transformations into remixes and other visual representations constitutes an instance of online symbolic accretion. I propose the theoretical concept of rhizomorph, understood as a digital image event that transforms as it moves through a digitally mediated environment to provide an alternative conception of a particular event.KEYWORDS: Rhizomorphonline symbolic accretioncirculationimage eventextrajudicial executions AcknowledgementI would like to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Roger Aden for his insightful suggestions and invaluable contributions to this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Amanda C. 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Olson, Constitutive Visions: Indigeneity and Commonplaces of National Identity in Republican Ecuador (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 1–24.34 Olson, Constitutive Visions, 10.35 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3–25.36 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 21.37 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 21.38 John W. Delicath and Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Image Events, the Public Sphere, and Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups,” Argumentation 17, no. 3 (2003): 315.39 Delicath and DeLuca, “Image Events,” 321–9.40 Delicath and DeLuca, “Image Events,” 321.41 Delicath and DeLuca, “Image Events,” 328.42 Hariman and Lucaites, “Public Identity and Collective Memory,” 41.43 The National Liberation Army (ELN) was founded in 1964 as a pro-Cuban guerrilla, anti-imperialist organization, with roots in the Colombian student movement of the 1960s and the principles of liberation theology. 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Cole, “Commemorating Mass Violence: Truth Commission Hearings as a Genre of Public Memory,” Southern Communication Journal 83, no. 3 (2018): 164.80 Monica Coibanu, “Criminalising the Past and Reconstructing Collective Memory: The Romanian Truth Commission,” Europe–Asia Studies 61, no. 2 (2009): 334.