Information visualization and/as enunciation
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2017-0004 |
| Pages | 903-916 |
| Author | Johanna Drucker |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Information visualization
and/as enunciation
Johanna Drucker
Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose –A Recent work in information studies re-engages with theories of subject enunciation first
developed in the work of twentieth century structuralist and post-structuralist critics. To date this work has
not been extended to the analysis of data visualizations. The purpose of this paper is to assert that
information visualizations embody specific dynamics of positionality for which linguist Emile Benveniste’s
formulation of a speaking and spoken subject provides a critical analytic framework. In particular,
enunciative theory can be used to explicitly address the mechanisms of power formation in information
graphics “spreadsheets, charts and interfaces”that are frequently seen as mere presentations of quantitative
or statistical information. This approach is based on attention to the performative aspects of graphic
expression and the ways familiar features such as frontality framing and scale can be read critically.
Design/methodology/approach –A theoretical argument that applies literature in enunciation as
developed in linguistics, film theory, and psychoanalysis to information visualizations. The paper makes
specific analyses of the graphical features of spreadsheets, common charts and graphs, and interfaces to show
how they create speaking and spoken subject positions.
Findings –The theory of enunciation is useful in understanding the ways information representations,
particularly visualizations of data, work to produce power relations.
Research limitations/implications –The topic may seem to draw on theoretical positions that are
associated with structural and post-structural theory popular three decades ago, but since the study of
enunciation was never applied to information visualizations, the work feels timely. Recent work in
information studies has re-engaged with these theoretical issues, but not applied them to charts, graphs, and
other visual forms. Information visualizations are so prevalent that any critical insight into their operations
feels timely, even urgent.
Originality/value –The concept of information as enunciation in recent work in information studies has not
been applied to visualizations. Analysis of the production of subject positions as commonly understood in
other fields (linguistics, textual studies, film studies, visual studies, and psychoanalysis across a broad range
of cultural studies fields) can be usefully applied to information graphics.
Keywords Design, Linguistics, Information visualization, Data, Documents, Data visualization,
Enunciation, Theories of the subject
Paper type Conceptual paper
In the 1990s and early 2000s, many constructs from critical theory were incorporated into
analysis of information, particularly in the work by Bernd Frohman, Birger Hjørland, and
Ronald Day, as well as others somewhat more tangentially related to the field, like Mark
Poster (see Frohmann, 1992; Hjorland, 2000; Day, 2005; Poster 1983). Their critical
orientations inclined them to the same borrowing of post-structuralism that was ongoing in
other social sciences and humanities. More recent work in information studies, particularly
that of Day, has brought attention back to the theory of the subject –and to analysis of
subjectivity in information systems. In Indexing It All, Day explicitly describes the relations
of persons to documents in terms of positionality, and all that this implies in terms of power
relations and the critical theoretical discourses that address its formation (Day, 2014).
“There isn’t any separate Platonic realm of “ideas”apart from their enunciation”
(Day, 2014, p. 6). Day’s statement could be applied directly to graphical forms of
presentation, but, interestingly, very little work has been done to make this connection.
An informationvisualization is not a statement,not simply a presentation of “ideas”anymor e
than any other articulation. Every visualization is anact of direct address (Drucker, 2014)[1].
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 5, 2017
pp. 903-916
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-01-2017-0004
Received 4 January 2017
Revised 15 June 2017
Accepted 25 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
903
Information
visualization
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