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Colors of testimony: a palette on the rhetoric of surviving, thriving, and entanglement

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Colors of Testimony:
A Palette on the Rhetoric of Surviving, Thriving, and Entanglement

by

Abigayle R. Wilkins

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS

May 2020

Copyright 2020 Abigayle R. Wilkins

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..

Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………………
I. Introduction to Testimony…………………………………………………..
II. Moral Testimony……………………………………………………………
III. Stylistic Testimony……………………………………………...………….
IV. Aesthetic Testimony ………………………………………………...…….
V. Introduction to Hopepunk…………………………………………………..
VI. Medium and Form of Testimony…………………………………………...

Summary and Research Questions………………………………………………………………

Method……………………………………………………………………………………………..
I. Content Analysis………………………………………………………..
II. Text Mining……………………………………………………………..

Results………………………………………………………………………………………….......
I. An Iranian Metamorphosis………………………………………………
II. Snotgirl………………………………………………………………….
III. Paper Girls……………………………………………………………….

Discussion and Conclusions………………………………………………………………………

References………………………………………………………………………………………….

Appendices…………………………………………………………………………………………
Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix B…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix C…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix D…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix E…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix F……………………………………………………………………........
Appendix G…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix H…………………………………………………………………………
Appendix I…………………………………………………………………….........
Appendix J…………………………………………………………………….........

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ABSTRACT

Within the domain of testimony, each of the following subsects of testimony is unique
from the other given its circumstance or cause, its form, its presentation, and its aim: moral
testimony, and what it is to speak as a survivor; stylistic testimony, and what it is to speak from a
thriving and promotional perspective; and, aesthetic testimony, what it is to speak so as to
introduce belief so that another may be moved to come to know for himself by participating,
engaging, and becoming entangled within the artistic, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of
aesthetic. This analysis explores the rhetoric of testimony and how the narrative of personal
experience might be reinvented from being something produced for effect into something that is
alternatively used for affect by prompting individual curiosity and greater cultural engagement.

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Colors of Testimony: A Palette on the Rhetoric of Surviving, Thriving, and Entanglement
INTRODUCTION
The Rhetoric of Narrative and Storytelling
Narration uses oral and written speech to describe a series of connected events with the
intention of moving people and generating a response from those people based on the story they
have just been told. Telling stories about ideas—lived or imagined—is how people are able to
make ideas available for use in real life by sharing them with a body outside of one’s own
(Hopkins, 2019). Any narrative, then, requires a speaker with a subject matter, an audience
(whom will serve as either observers or judges), and an objective for the speech to accomplish.
Narrative may take shape in either oral format, by giving a speech, or, in a visual format, such as
in written text or in the creation of art. From these characteristics, there is an inarguable
rhetorical quality to narration: it demands a symbiotic relationship between speaker and
audience. It is successful only when what is offered is received; communication is accomplished
only when the spoken word can be heard, or when the written or artistic creation can be seen.
Narratives are born out of and from individual experiences in the world, but also suggest
that something is not present—something is not being experienced on its own, or by some other
person, and therefore requires narration to assist in imagining, knowing, or understanding the
absence of that thing. This storytelling allows for constant reconciliation and mediation between
the known and the unknown, the understood and the yet to be understood, always “refer[ring] the
speaker and the listener back to the same object” (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 174). Attributing
language and narration to be entirely propositional in character, Ulrich Steinvorth observes in his
2013 work, The Metaphysics of Modernity: What Makes Societies Thrive:

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…language distinguishes between descriptions and imperatives…between facts and
norms, between what is the case and what we want to be the case, between reality and
possibility, between the concrete and the abstract. (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 174)
Stories, then, allow people to impose order on information, and on what is consciously
observed in the world. The stories condition and contextualize what would otherwise be
“nothingness” (Hopkins, 2019).
Narration is not meant to be a genre or a type, specifically; rather, it ought to be
considered a form of “meta-discourse” in that it is a way to rationalize behavior (Iversen, 2014,
p. 580). By confirming and ordering characters, objects, space, and time into a story,
communication attributes value to those characters and objects in space and time (Bamberg,
2014). Using money as a specific example in his January 14, 2019 podcast episode discussing
the imagination, Rob Hopkins establishes that without the narrative frame to understand what
money is, or why it is significant, or what it is used for, or what it represents for functional
purposes, it is nothing more than “paper and ink,” which do not by themselves hold value
(Hopkins, 2019). It is through narration about the money—the ink on paper, and what utility it
has, what it is meant to represent in social exchange—that the money holds any value at all.
As a participant to constructing a rhetorical social narrative, a speaker has a duty to
please, to teach, and to move his audience (Vico, 1996). Intending to form a coalition of support
for ideas and values, the orator strives to “bend the spirit” of his audience through carefully
fashioned speech by enticing the attention, desires, and emotions of the listener (Vico, 1996, p.
7). By way of bending the spirit of an audience, Vico suggests that rhetorical speech establishes
either what is to be done or what is not to be done, and that, in effect, “the subject matter of

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rhetoric is whatever is which falls under deliberation of whether it is to be done or not to be
done” (Vico, 1996, p. 8).
Aristotle identified three species of rhetorical communication, each of which is defined
and specific to its form, end, relation to time, and process for affecting the spirit and minds of
audiences: the judicial, the epideictic, and the deliberative (Aristotle, 2007).
Judicial rhetoric seeks justice through mechanisms of either accusing or defending a
person, an object, or an action of the past (Aristotle, 2007). It is the speaker’s objective to
persuade an audience to make a decision—a judgment—in response to a situation deemed to be
unfair, and that now requires resolution or correction (Aristotle, 2007). To direct the listening
audience toward taking action to restore justice, the speaker’s narrative format is carefully
directed by way of asking questions that will ultimately produce answers that present as factual,
evidentiary, and inarguable (Aristotle, 2007).
Given its formal structure, insistence on truthful fact statements, and its objective of
restoring justice to maintain order, judicial rhetoric presumes a particular authority. There is an
inherent assumption that the speaker directing the narrative possesses knowledge and wisdom in
relation to the circumstance under review that supersedes the knowledge or wisdom of any other
person—the voice of the selected speaker, more than any other, was entrusted with protecting the
truth of the matter. As a witness offering testimony, the speaker is granted a nearly impenetrable
authority over how truthful the narrative is; the audience believes the personal statements to be
statements of facts, statements of truth, because the witness is expert to having observed his or
her own experience. This view of testimony “holds that a speaker’s assertion should be
considered evidence for the belief being asserted, and the question then concerns the epistemic
status of the assertion-as-evidence” (Pickford, 2013, p. 199). Judicial rhetoric affectively

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emboldens witness testimony to evolve what could otherwise be considered mere opinion
statements into truth-claims and objective statements of fact.
Epideictic rhetoric serves to either praise or blame a subject by way of speaking in front
of an observing audience and proceeding to honor or shame the subject (Aristotle, 2007). The
epideictic speech is specific to the present; its delivery does not call upon an audience to take
action in response to a past or a future, but instead, simply requires that the audience listen to and
believe what is being said (Aristotle, 2007). Aristotle believed epideictic rhetoric to be specific
to either funeral oration or speeches of praise; however, of the three species of rhetoric,
epideictic storytelling has evolved to serve as something of a catch-all category for any
communication form that exists within an artistic space, given its less restrictive definition—
especially when compared to either the judicial or deliberative forms (Aristotle, 2007).
Epideictic speeches were traditionally known as festival speeches, given their
presentation to large audiences during public gatherings or events. Oftentimes encompassing
speeches relating to art—painting, sculpture, and music—epideictic speeches serve to “instill,
preserve, or enhance cultural values” amongst the audience, using language to amplify and
exaggerate what is good, what is honorable, what is noble—praiseworthy—or what should be
regarded as shameful (Aristotle, 2007, p. 47).
Aristotle’s third species of rhetoric is the deliberative form, guided by the principle of
moving an audience to act in such a way that will serve the best interests of a group in the future
(Aristotle, 2007). The deliberative speech audience is tasked with making a value-based
decision, much like the audience to the judicial speech (Aristotle, 2007). Deliberative speech
directs attention to the possibility of achieving the good: the most happiness, virtue, self-
sufficiency, and pleasantness for the most people (Aristotle, 2007). As it speaks to ideals and the

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potential for something better than currently is, the speech proposes actions that should or should
not be taken to achieve those ideals. Limited only by considering what is or is not possible to
achieve, the audience “deliberately chooses” to act to serve what they believe will accomplish
the most good (Aristotle, 2007, p. 64).
While remaining true to Aristotle’s proposed three species of rhetoric, rhetorical
communication practices are less limited in terms of presentation and delivery. Persuasion
knows no specific communication platform: oration, performance, writing, art, and it continues
to expand across ever-growing media formats. Regardless of its presentation space, though,
constructing and delivering a persuasive narrative is consistent in that it responds to specifics,
and aims to arrive at normative judgments (Iversen, 2014). Rhetoric emerges out of some
circumstance of necessary and sufficient conditions that stir dialogue exchanges between bodies,
and looks to achieve a specific result by “convincing, uniting, or otherwise moving people”
toward that specific result (Iversen, 2014, p. 575).
Ultimately, rhetorical communication evokes empathy by constructing a greater social
narrative. Whether taking Aristotle’s judicial, epidictic, or deliberative forms, the narrative
stories that fuel communication practices serve to promote shared values and interests. People
tell stories because they have something to say, and because people believe that the stories are
worthy of being told: the narratives possess a social value. The discourse that the narratives
generate serve to maintain and evolve those social values by shaping collective understanding of
the world by influencing ideas, creating knowledge frameworks, archiving memory, and
inspiring activity.
In a post-modern era, that dialogue is no longer bound to traditional rhetoric of
convincing people through the mechanisms of sending and receiving a spoken or written

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message. Rhetorical speech has evolved beyond simply persuading listening minds toward an
idea with variations of rational, ethical, or emotional appeal. Regardless of its judicial, epidictic,
or deliberative form, rhetorical communication now seeks not to persuade a listening audience of
an idea, but to induce the audiences to participate, engage, and entangle themselves within that
idea. The minds, moved by ideas, become agents of the narrative, using their physical bodies to
move the narrative along, representing the “ideas, world views, image[s], and tonality” through
individual actions (Iversen, 2014, p. 577). Beyond the respective roles of speaker or audience
member, collectively, the bodies are participants in the social narrative, and together manifest
agency over shaping the code by which they communicate with one another.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
I. Introduction to Testimony

As a spoken or written statement, testimony offers a singular personal account of
something. The testimonial statement involves a speaker sharing knowledge by telling a story
unique to his own experience—narrating an event, a circumstance, or a personally informed
interpretation of something that the speaker believes to be true. Testimony also requires an
audience: it “is not a monologue; it cannot take place in solitude” (Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 70).
When considered in relation to narratives told for pleasure or entertainment purposes, testimony
is understood to be formal in its tone and in its objective of arriving at the truth of any matter,
because it is born from lived experience (Vico, 1996). To speak to the truth of any matter, then,
the speaker is accredited with having special wisdom and knowledge that is then communicated
with “the most selective of words which have been placed within a certain context and aptly
arranged in such a manner as to be pleasing to the ears” (Vico, 1996, p. 5). The audience has
little incentive to challenge or doubt the statement, because it is believed to come from someone
whose mind is informed by truth, whose spirit is informed by virtue, and who is motivated to
speak only to the truth and honesty of the matter (Vico, 1996).
Cloaked in this allegiance to virtue and truth, testimony is recognized as being something
alternative to other narrative statements. Testimony is unique because it is personal in nature.
The content of the story is specific and customized to an individual experience; it is told from a
first-person perspective, and is traditionally communicated orally (Davies, 2016). Articulating
the account affirms the speaker’s intention to present something about himself and to express
something from within his own experience (Elsby, 2013). While the testimonial narrative is
seemingly specific for and to the narrator, by being shared to a public audience, it becomes

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associative for the listener, and thus more allusive to similar or imaginable experiences. The
audience can relate to the witness’s testimony because they become “imaginatively and
emotionally immersed in a represented world” that is “similar to real life” despite not having
experienced that episodic moment of the world themselves (Wolf, 2014, p. 270). Based on the
narrative’s verisimilitude and its simulation of a real-life experience that the audience can
understand, the audience is persuaded to know a truth about the world that was only ever
representational to begin with when it was offered to them, given that it was presented in the
representational form of narrative (Wolf, 2014, p. 272). The representational truth invites every
audience member to be present to the narrator’s experience, without having been there to witness
it at all. Through the testimony, the audience can recall, imagine, and be involved in the
narrative.
Despite being personal in nature and rather anecdotal, testimony’s qualities of truth-based
specificity and public respectability profile the speaker’s narrated statements of believed truths to
be more akin to declarative proclamations than mere opinion-laden commentary (Vico, 1996).
Testimony can function as something declarative because it originates in response to some
effect; it can function as a proclamation because its commentary on a past effect anticipates a
future affect on another external community. Making such declarative proclamations about the
truth of a matter or qualifying a personal experience as being factual on the basis of its having
happened at all empowers the practice of testimonial oratory to serve a purpose other than
acknowledging the speaker’s experience. Offering testimony invites an audience to understand a
claim to truth.
The speaker is already aware of the narrative; he was a witness to the event, and therefore
has a complete knowledge of his own account of the story. He knows the narrative to be true,

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because he believes it to be true. Recounting the narrative to himself and to other bodies aims to
secure greater truth by making the information more knowable. Speaking to the public as a
specialist and with confidence about what something is or is not suggests that the speaker’s
knowledge operates within the framework of something known—a socially established precedent
(Vico, 1996). The contents of the narrative—its supposed truths—intend to accomplish
something for the speaker, but also, for the audience. Presenting the story publicly establishes
that there is a purpose and a need for an audience to hear that story and to know that story, to
secure that truth. The very act of publicly articulating the narrative of a personal lived
experience strips the speaker from having sole ownership over the story. The story becomes
public knowledge, and affects something outside of the speaker’s own experience. Confronting
the story by imagining it as it is told, together, the speaker and the audience formulate an
intimate relationship with the truth-based narrative. There is an intersection between private and
public thought from which there is an opportunity to affect a social response or understanding of
something that would have otherwise been remote and isolated to the individual who first
claimed ownership of the information.
As a narrative form that is rooted in the virtue of truth, the value of a testimonial account
is threatened by the post-truth modern era. While testimony has always been a platform for
storytelling, it was accredited with being factual, evidentiary, and believed to be composed from
truth. In the post-truth era, where “facts and fiction are blurring into an indistinguishable mess
and power belongs to whoever can tell the best story, true or not,” the based-on-fact identity of
testimony is somewhat dissolved, and in the process, becomes more recognizable as being
another story (Anders, 2019). In his 2013 contribution to The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical

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Analyses of Holocaust Art, titled, “The Aesthetic-Historical Imaginary: On Shoah and Maus,”
Henry W. Pickford identifies that:
Here, the relevant debate centers on the epistemic status of testimony, that is, the basis
upon which we should accept the assertions of others as knowledge, even assuming that
the speaker is warranted or justified in the belief she asserts to us. While the belief
expressed in the speaker’s assertion may ultimately have derived from a different kind of
epistemic source, what warrant does the audience have to accept her asserted belief as
true, that is, as knowledge? (Pickford, 2013, p. 199)
The audience is encouraged to establish a relationship with the narrative so that they might do
something with the knowledge they have acquired from having heard the story.
Ultimately, with respect to narrative and testimony, whether the knowledge presented is
fact or fiction is not significant, so long as the audience has been rhetorically moved to believe it.
Where truth-seeking disciplines such as philosophy and science claim to “require us to rely on
reasons rather than on rhetorics,” it is the appeal to reason in the philosophical or scientific
narrative that is itself a rhetorical device to convince someone of an idea (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 9).
Testimonial narratives, too, in that they are intended to be rational and truth-based, extend ideas.
How truthful those truth-statements measure as being to an audience take a secondary precedent
to the measure of how convinced the audience is by the narrative they have been told. Whether
the content is real or not—factual or not—matters less than how the communication of a story
makes people feel (Anders, 2019). The audience accepts the credibility and assertion of the
speaker, and accepts the truth-statements in testimony to be truthful, because just as the speaker
believes the testimony to be true, the audience, too, believes it to be true. While “the shape,
force, and direction of how we might be activated by the testimony of another can never be fully

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knowable or predictable,” testimony serves to engage an audience, and move it to either confirm
or challenge the existing precedents and systems of social order (Rodriguez, 124).
With a framework understanding of what it is to offer testimony, much like Aristotle
identified all rhetorical communication to fall within one of three species of rhetoric—the
judicial, the deliberative, and the epidictic—I will now introduce three subsects of testimony.
Within the domain of testimony, each of the following subsects of testimony is unique from the
other given its circumstance or cause, its form, its presentation, and its aim: moral testimony,
what it is to speak as a survivor; stylistic testimony, and what it is to speak from a thriving and
promotional perspective; and, aesthetic testimony, what it is to speak so as to introduce belief so
that another may be moved to come to know for himself by participating, engaging, and
becoming entangled within the artistic, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of aesthetic.

II. Moral Testimony
Judicial Nature of Moral Testimony
Moral testimony is judicial in nature: the speaker seeks aid and assistance from an
external authority to resolve an infraction or injustice made against the speaker. Until it is
brought before a public audience, the narrative account exists as a dialogue in isolation—it is a
story about a specific account, from a specific perspective, and is true only to that person because
it was his experience. Though based on memory, committing the narrative to testimony in the
form of public address invites participation in the dialogue about that experience and a space to
determine—judge—what is to be done from a moral position to make sense of that experience.
Further, by allowing the speaker’s story to be recognized as moral testimony, there is an
expectation (or assumption) that the narrative is true—or, at least, that it is more true than any

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other form of narration—because it is intended to directly comment and reflect on something that
has already occurred.
In their analysis of the admissibility, sufficiency, and credibility of witness testimony,
Scallen and Weitoff observed that expert testimony from a witness still maintains the true
characteristics of persuasive narration in that it is created in a unique context to achieve some
moral victory all while under the guide of the law (Scallen & Weitoff, 1998). The witness’
narrative is being brought to the public—a judging public—because something moral is at stake
and is in need of correction (Callahan, 2018). In Moral Testimony: A Re-Conceived
Understanding Explanation (2018), Callahan explained:
[T]hese are cases where a hearer very clearly comes to believe the testified content on the
testifier’s word, or on her authority—the testimony is decisive for the hearer and does not
occasion significant reflection on the testified content. (Callahan, 2018, p. 439)
Moral testimony is complex in its temporality; it speaks to matters of the past, things that now
only exist within memory, but within a present moment under the guide of how things could,
should, or ought to be in the future as a result of that past matter (Iversen, 2014). In her 1992
work with Shoshana Felman, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and
History, Dr. Dori Laub elaborates on this:
The traumatic event, although real, took place outside the parameters of ‘normal’ reality,
such as causality, sequence, place and time. The trauma is thus an event that has no
beginning, no ending, no before, no during and no after…Trauma survivors live not with
memories of the past, but with an event that could not and did not proceed through to its
completion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as its survivors are

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concerned, continues into the present and is current in every respect. (Felman & Laub,
1992, p. 69)
Speaking to and about the trauma event by repeating the narrative is a mechanism for the speaker
to survive the event that recurs in his own memory, and allows the speaker to achieve validity for
having survived the experience, because someone else is made to know that it happened. In this
same context, the hearer does not have much room for reflection on the survivor’s testimony,
because the hearer may only consider the frame of information that has been offered about the
past, in a condensed present moment, about a future outcome. Operating within that curated
narrative that speaks to matters of morality, the audience response becomes a matter of will—
being moved to make a judgment and take action based on the illustration of past events.

Aim of Moral Testimony
In aiming to persuade an audience to made a judgment and take action based on the fact-
based statements of a past action, moral testimony seeks to achieve justice, restoration, truth, and
moral victory for an individual—someone who has experienced something, has survived that
experience, possesses a knowledge of that experience, and is now positioned to recall it and
make claims about it. As the intention of moral testimony is to achieve justice, it is suggested
that its offering is necessary so as to maintain order. The witness’ narrative was produced as a
result of some “disruption to continuity,” and in its “commitment to truth, [it] is a passage
through and exploration of differences, rather than an exploration of identity” (Bamberg, 2014,
p. 250; Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 91). While the audience’s judgment and responsive action
cannot necessarily undo or resolve the past action itself, it can resolve the moral effect of the
action, and directs moral progress forward by “training for the gradual refinement of personal

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character and behavior,” fulfilling the Epictetus standard (Lebell, 1994, p. 1). In doing so, the
audience makes its best effort to reorient the speaker’s experience to one that—by moral
standards—should be.
Further, moral testimony confirms that the speaker believes there is a possibility to
achieve justice by making his statement to someone other than himself. The speaker is
encouraged to narrate his experience because of an underlying belief in the ethical nature of the
social order—to request that an audience act ethically and resolve an ethical infraction requires
that the speaker, too, abide by the same moral code and contribute what he can so that justice
may be achieved (Merino, 2010). In narrating an event based on memory and in being present to
remember the experience which measures as being wrong to some degree, the witness is abiding
by the very ethics and moral system that he seeks resolve from (Merino, 2010). By “using
personal narratives to make public claims for collective human rights and recognition,” the
witness wills himself to speak within the framework of established moral code so that such an
ethical or moral infraction may be prevented from affecting someone else in the future
(Rodriguez, 2019, p. 119). By speaking voluntarily to achieve a greater moral good, the witness
demonstrates power of the will: a determination to tell a story to restore justice, if not for
himself, than for others who may not have been able to speak, or perhaps, to prevent their need
to speak in the future.
This will to speak in the name of achieving justice and personal resolve is manifested
both internally and externally. Willing oneself to offer testimony in a judicial context, to a
judging audience, is an embodiment of stoic virtues; assembling a narrative based on a past harm
is a testament of how one should survive the past, but also, is a testament to how one should live
on having survived that past (Littmann, 2013a). The testimony is a representation of the

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speaker’s purity of intention to live well—to live ethically and virtuously, by the moral code he
has always lived by, and to be brave and courageous in the face of a challenging circumstance
(Littmann, 2013a). To resolve something internal, such as the affect of harm to the witness’
soul, the witness maintains his own ethical duty to be skillful at life, to be the best person he can
be, by telling a story. The survivor has knowledge about what he is or is not able to control.
Telling a story with the intention of achieving fair resolve is reflective of the survivor’s stoic
ability to maintain power of mind, maintain power over emotion, and maintain the power of
choosing to respond (Littmann, 2013a; Littmann, 2013b). Introducing his 2019 exhibition
collection, Facing Survival, portrait artist David Kassan reflected on the transmission of
morality, empathy, and social value that occurs when a survivor reveals something internal,
sharing his view that “survivors are ambassadors for positive change, love, acceptance and
tolerance in our otherwise tumultuous world” (University of Southern California Fisher Art
Museum, 2019).
The witness’s speech is also prompted by an external power of the will grounded in his
individual placement within and amongst others in the social strata. Stoic ambition to live the
good and virtuous life is not limited to individual experience; living the good and virtuous life
also requires that one participate in and contribute to the benefit of society (Littmann, 2013a).
Because the good life is a social aspiration, justice within society is necessary, thus making the
achievement of such a just and good society a collective action—with every action, each
individual as morally obligated to himself as he is to the other. To live the good life, and in
living to be content, one must be resilient and take action, both “with and for others in just
institutions” (Ricoeur, 1995, p. 180). Offering knowledge about the past and a circumstance of
wrongdoing via personal narrative testimony is, then, necessary. In a Kantian sense, the witness’

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speech acts in accordance with objective morality by contributing to the service of justice, as
aiding in restoring order will achieve a higher good for a group that extends beyond the benefit
that will serve his own self (Aarons, 2013). Intending to call on justice and fairness, moral
testimony turns a private past action into something public; and just as the witness is urged by
the external power of will to speak to that past, the audience, too, must then be urged by the
external power of will to act in response.

Narrative Process of Moral Testimony in a Judicial Setting: Questions of Truth and Fact
Under the law, moral testimony presents a narrative in which a decision or judgment is to
be made to ultimately enforces a particular structure (Olson, 2014). In that it looks to enforce
structure and make a decision of merit and consequence, the judicial nature of moral testimony
expects that statements made are truthful and shall not be contested. While its origin is
dependent upon memory and (what may be a filtered) recall of an original experience, the
testimony still registers as being essential in nature: it is the only access point and source of
information to resolving a problem. Remembering and speaking through testimony reminds the
public that the claims represent “a narrative of urgency,” and that the story being told is being
told out of necessity because it “involv[es] a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity,
exploitation, or survival” (Merino, 2010; Beverly, 1993, p.73). As Juana Maria Rodriguez points
out in her 2019 article, Keyword 6: Testimony, this testimony:
…is a part of a larger evidentiary process used to establish a set of facts. Judges and
jurors are presented with evidence and asked to adjudicate a set of claims, positioning
individual testimony within the larger context of other truth claims and interpretive
framings. (Rodriguez, 2019, p. 119)

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Truth-claims, such as those from a historian, present an assumedly objective account because the
format of the statement is meant to be omniscient (Lander, 2005). The objective of the truth
claim in a moral testimony is to “present a true representation of the past” (Lander, 2005, p.
114).
The truth claims submitted to a judging audience present, then, as forensic in nature. It is
intended that the audience process the information as being accurate and reliable, so that it may
question what is relevant with respect to law and order, and how the law may be applied to
restore justice. The claims are, of course, subject to known standards of what it is for something
to be true or historically accurate (Pickford, 2013). In its assessment of the matter, the audience
must measure the truthfulness of testimony as a form of evidence, because the narrative is what
constitutes the fact of the matter (Olson, 2014). Audiences will “accept what a witness tells
[them] because [the witness’s] reports in the past [were] reliably accurate” (Pickford, 2013, p.
199). Both the witness speaking through testimony and the listening audience privilege the
narrative as being as true as it can be, because “once a concern for truth and accuracy is lost, then
a radical skeptical doubt gives way to a prevailing relativism about truth,” and the social value
and equity that comes from abiding by a moral framework is diminished entirely (Duncan, 2019,
p. 5). As Duncan so plainly states in his analysis of skeptic philosophy, should one “abandon the
idea of accuracy, then it doesn’t matter anymore what is true and what is not; but getting things
right should matter” (Duncan, 2019, p. 5). Within the judicial scope, priding moral virtue and
the reparation of harm, moral testimony is situated to accomplish just that: getting things right.

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Role of the Speaker: Survivor, Witness, and Expert
The speaker, credible as a source of information based on having lived and witnessed his
own experience, communicates to an audience the circumstances under which he was wronged.
In the 1992 critique by Shoshana Felman and Dr. Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in
Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, Dr. Laub reveals the layered survivor identity of the
testimonial witness by explaining how “the very process of [one’s] bearing witness to the trauma
she had lived through [by explaining it to an audience] helped her now to come to know the
event [again], and [as a result, constitutes] her way of being, of surviving, of resisting” (Felman
& Laub, 1992, p. 62). Having endured the moral infraction made against him, the witness is
identifiable as a survivor, because he has outlived the past experience and is now positioned to
speak to its nature. Because the witness seeks moral action from the listening and judging
audience, the witness’s narrative, too, is assumed to be moral and truthful, making the witness an
authority figure with particular knowledge. The witness has knowledge that others do not
posses—cannot possess—as both a participant in and as a survivor of the event. In the judicial
framework, the narrative is presented as being evidentiary, which allows for a hearer to
“…clearly come to believe the testified content on the testifier’s word, or on her authority—the
testimony is decisive for the hearer and does not occasion significant reflection on the testified
content” (Callahan, 2018, p. 439). The witness’s identity is “never static,” and is continuously
shaped by the initial event: it was first an event that the witness lived, making the individual a
victim to the event; then, the event existed in the individual’s memory, making the individual
both someone who lived and survived the event; finally, in offering testimony about the event,
re-creating the event through narrative, the individual is credited with having expert knowledge
and authority over the truth and reality of the event (Ahumada & Jung, 2013, p. 135).

19
As a simultaneous victim, survivor, and authority figure to what is socially recognized as
a trauma or harm to the individual, the witness dutifully accepts the role of playing the truth-
teller whom is expected to “deal with and incorporate the events into a coherent story of [his]
life” (Ahumada & Jung, 2013, p. 135). It is then possible, under the law and an preferred moral
code, for the audience to “form a belief…based on testimony…in an epistemically appropriate
manner,” so long as testimony is reliable, reputable, legitimate, plausible, reasonable, and logical
(Duncan, 2019, p. 17). In Moral Testimony: A Re-Conceived Understanding Explanation,
Callahan emphasizes this idea by stating, “…it is certainly not in general odd or problematic to
acquire beliefs from testimony one knows to be from a reliable source” (Callahan, 2018, p. 439).
This situates the speaker in undulating identities in suspended time: as moral testimony
seeks a correction to something of the past, the narrative is based on what the witness can
remember and recall from the original event but is regulated by circumstances of the present.
This requires that the speaker connect a distant past to a present moment, engaging himself in a
necessary process of looking back so as to establish the event’s reality for someone outside of
himself. In doing so, the witness establishes a contextual relationship between those two
moments of time, and instructionally identifies for the audience what was morally incongruent in
the past, and why the present moment requires a correction for the sake of future progress.
Ahumada and Jung clarify Ricoeur’s suggestion that “events have meaning and significance only
after they take place, when we look back at them and integrate them as part of our present
identity” (Ahumada & Jung, 2013, p. 134). Epictetus suggests that when something happens,
“the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it, or resent it”
(Lebell, 1994, p. 16). From a situation that initially marginalized the individual as being one
within the victim minority class, creating a narrative and giving testimony empowers the speaker

20
to achieve near heroism; surviving the event and later telling the story about it makes the event
and the survival significant, thus, he is triumphant in conquering the burden he first experienced
(Ahumada & Jung, 2013). Accepting responsibility and duty to achieve a moral progress for
himself and for others, the speaker commits to moral virtue, showing bravery and courage in the
recovery process that is telling his story, refusing to dwell in a state of victimhood (Lebell,
1994).

Role of the Judging Audience
“The listener to the narrative of extreme human pain, of massive psychic trauma, faces a
unique situation” (Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 57). As soon as it is offered to a listening ear,
testimony becomes an object of criticism. The lifespan and potential for the narrative to
accomplish anything beyond existing as personal reflection is entirely dependent upon the self
and other relationship that is established between the speaker and the audience. For the witness,
the story is already valid and credible—he believes it to be true. Communicating it to another
person, though, especially when seeking social reparation, positions the audience into a role of
accrediting the validity of the speaker’s experience. Because the listener is made “a party to the
creation of knowledge de novo,” the spoken word is of no value if is not listened to, and as a
result, the audience’s participation is as critical as the speaker’s (Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 57).
Beyond listening to the testimony and in order to make a sound judgment about what is to
be done, the audience must obtain information and knowledge from the speaker (Duncan, 2019).
To develop knowledge, the audience must be convinced that they are to believe the information
that is shared with them (Duncan, 2019). To believe the information, the audience expects that
they will be given rational bases to substantiate that they should believe the testimony is true

21
(Duncan, 2019). To effectively resolve the dispute brought before them, the audience must
actively engage with the testimony; to make a decision about what is to be done, the audience
must not only listen, but it must critically evaluate and consider the information they have been
given (Callahan, 2018).
Understanding the speaker’s propositions “includes appreciating some reasons why the
proposition is true, as well as appreciating some things that follow from the proposition, and
why” (Callahan, 2018, p. 441). This capacity to understand the speaker’s testimony is not
restricted to scientific standards of processing rational and evidentiary information.
Understanding a witness’s testimony “involves personal will and subjective emotion,” requiring
that the audience show empathy to the speaker and showing interest to take care of the speaker
(Callahan, 2018, p. 452). The speaker-audience relationship situated from moral testimony
reflects that in seeking help and a needing to be cared for, the speaker looks to the audience must
then take care of the matter brought before them, as well as the individual who has brought the
matter to their attention.

III. Stylistic Testimony
Epidictic Nature of Stylistic Testimony
The principle nature of stylistic testimony is not to motivate the observer into taking
action in response to having heard a speaker’s narrative, but, instead, to convince the audience to
simply believe what is being said as a result of their being present to hear it at all (Aristotle,
2007). Stylistic testimony is more so a matter of reframing information by collecting and
choreographing stories to make broad claims about society and culture that, when shared with an
audience, the audience will understand the narrative to represent either something that should be

22
desired or something that should be avoided (Aristotle, 2007). Much like photographs “alter and
enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe,” stylistic
testimony produces a narrative of what the speaker wants an audience to know based on what the
speaker believes is worthy of being known (Sontag, 1977, p. 14).
The epidictic nature of stylistic testimony reflects the collective understanding and
unspoken agreement that the speaker’s testimony is not intended to resolve any one situation in
particular, nor is it expected to implement the listening audience to respond with any true agency
(Aristotle, 2007). The speaker’s coloring and distorting truth into a preferred narrative that
encompasses imaginable circumstances allows the audience to follow the narrative more closely
so that they might identify with the values the narrative promotes. As a presentation, though,
stylistic testimony is meant to be just that: a presentation in the present moment; it is a spectacle
that can be observed and indulged in. The audience is free to take in the information as they
choose, and to do (or not do) something with it (Finch, 2015).

Aim of Stylistic Testimony: Praise or Blame of the Ideal
Stylistic testimony creates a narrative that is enriched with ornamentation and
amplification so as to reinforce the praising or blaming of the subject matter by speaking about a
subject in comparison or contrast to something else (Rodriguez, 2019). Looking to create either
connection to or distance from the subject, the story is not obligated to the particulars of the past
or unknowable qualities of the future (Rodriguez, 2019). The cause for the speech is simply
demonstrative and serves to make an example of something (Vico, 1996). The immediacy of the
present is not restricted to established truth, and it is not tasked with imagining something for the

23
future: it is only accountable to recognizing how things currently are now, and whether the
subject matter should be endorsed or condemned for the values it represents.
Speaking to either endorse or demote, the speaker simulates an ideal. Attempting to
move an audience to adopt and embody that which the speaker believes to be ideal, the speaker,
is bestowed with some element of complacency in making claims to the public: the speaker
believes the narrative he projects, and without an accountability to move the audience to
responding with agency, the speaker is left to thrive and indulge in having the authority to speak
however he should choose to do so, and promote the reality he believes to be true. Steinvorth
articulates this idea in The Metaphysics of Modernity: What Makes Societies Thrive (2013),
explaining that what is real can be real simply by committing to the belief in an ideal alternative:
The ideal I is the self I believed to be and that despite my action that shows my real self I
want to be and feel I am too. The real I is what I prove to be in the judgment of others
that I cannot recognize to be me. It is my public self. (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 184)
The speaker is able to thrive in the reality he projects and speaks about; speaking about it to an
audience, the speaker invites the listener to thrive in that reality, too, so long as they envision it
and believe it.

Narrative Process of Stylistic Testimony: Instilling, Preserving, and Enhancing Culture
As an epidictic narrative, stylistic testimony speak to interests that serve the speaker—
what is of value, what is not; what is pleasurable, what is not; what is favored, what is not; what
is desired, what is not. Steinvorth reminds that Locke’s definition of the self involves that,
“…the self is concerned for the self [and that] self-concern appears in blaming, praising, asking,
admonishing, and doing a lot of other things to ourselves (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 169). Those self-

24
motivated interests endorse what is considered to be an ideal way of being, ultimately promoting
what the speaker considers to be a preferred ideology and culture that people should embrace
(Steinvorth, 2013). This testimony speaks to something that is inherently aspirational; it need
not be authentic or true, it only needs to introduce a sense of what is desirable. The audience is
available to the speaker and listens to the subject matter. By listening, the audience interacts
with that subject matter in the most passive of circumstances, by simply taking it in for the
pleasure of taking it in.
Whether the audience takes interest in the testimony is not an effect of intrinsically
engaging with the subject matter or choosing to pursue the values of the testimony for their own
sake. Instead, enticed by pleasure or the immediate allure of happiness, both the speaker and the
audience allow themselves to be convenienced by selected truths by subscribing to the narrative
that aligns with their own self-interests. The stylistic testimony tempts the mind to enshrine
permanence to ideas that were only ever impermanent and put on display (Steinvorth, 2013).
The affect on the audience’s pathos in the moment is deterministic, because while the
testimony does not obligate the audience to act or respond in any direct means, its content
subverts the listener’s own experience to the subject matter. As a listener, the audience members
are allowed to imagining the narrative. While they are independent and autonomous to their
respective imaginations and understanding of that narrative, they remain dependent upon the
circumstances of that imagination—circumstances set by the speaker. The audience is dependent
upon the speaking Other’s granting them with the permission to access and imagine the subject
matter—it is not something the audience was left to imagine or determine freely. The speaker’s
testimonial projection begins to outweigh the prospect of any balanced reflection, especially
when it is not required or expected that the audience respond or reflect at all.

25
Role of the Speaker: Exemplifying what it is to Thrive
The role of the speaker in stylistic testimony is specific and simple: the testimony is an
opportunity for the speaker to tell a story—to make a comment—to a public audience, to those
who will agree to listen. The speaker still identifies as a witness in his capacity to recall and
imagine the experience or ideas he envisions as he describes them, however, he is only a witness
in so far as the subject matter he witnesses is imagined and constructed. Much like the speeches
offered at festivals or funerals where the speaker was free to compile samples of information to
suit the intentions of his narrative, the speaker is a witness to information that suits him. The
testimony is a story that stimulates phenomenon, offering actions and words for consideration to
no one in particular, but also to everyone who is able to listen and imagine. Steinvorth asserts
that this form of testimony is not meant to be one of singular experience, because:
…mental phenomena are as much objects of the same shared worlds as physical objects
are. They are public in the sense that what I know and refer to my talk or thought…can
be equally known and referred to by you. (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 175)
Given that the individual may speak to matters outside of or beyond his own personal endeavor
or lived experience, the speaker is, in essence, a spokesperson for ideals. It is his objective to be
a mechanism for suggestion and influence.
Unlike the evidentiary formulas of moral testimony in judicial frameworks, stylistic
testimony through the channels of epidictic communication suspends the need for analysis.
When the goal is to merely introduce a public to the potential agreement about an idea—whether
that subject matter is a topic of praise or blame—the witness is allowed to rely on emotion
because there is no need for rational appeal (Rodriguez, 2019).

26
The witness presents ideas that will affect the emotions of the audience, and that alone is
sufficient to ignite their ability to imagine and relate to what they hear. In doing so, the witness’s
speech creates space for self-identity formation: the speaker can self-identify as a person of
authority meant to demonstrate the successes or failures of the subject, and the audience, by
imagining the narrative the speaker relays, adapts the narrative such that it suits their own
experience (Vico, 1996). To successfully entice the audience to emotionally engage and self-
identify with the testimony and that which it embellishes, the speaker will illustrate concepts that
the audience will be familiar with (Vico, 1996). More specifically, the speaker praises persons,
facts, or things that derive either “from circumstances or from three kinds of goods,” fortune, the
body, and the spirit (Vico, 1996, p. 51). With respect to fortune, the speaker endorses the
cultural value of wealth, power, honor, and relations with other people (Vico, 1996). Speaking
about the body, the crowd imagines the physique, beauty, demeanor, health, longevity, agility,
and robustness that a most-perfect self could obtain (Vico, 1996). As for the spirit, it is desirable
to groom one that balances ingenuity, imagination, memory, intellect, and moral superiority
(Vico, 1996).
This narrative is a stylistic demonstration of values. As it is something that can only be
imagined by the audience, it exists as a form of iconography: symbolic, representative, and
comprehensible, despite its intangible form (Ahumada & Jung, 2013). In this regard, the
testimony is akin to an advertisement; though the narrative does not require that the audience
take any form of direct responsive action, the speaker, as witness to ideal forms, commissions the
attention and values of the audience, deteriorating independent thought in the process
(Rodriguez, 2019). The speaker dominates the narrative and the response to it—or lack
thereof—by “determin[ing] the speed, scope, audience, and rhetorical contours of testimonial

27
claims and the structure of available response” (Rodriguez, 2019, p. 120). Once the speaker’s
testimony enters into a more massive public domain, there is less room for unique experience,
because the audience’s imagination is cultured to understand within a specific realm of
possibility—a mentality that the speaker intends to be shared within and amongst that public
(Rodriguez, 2019). The speaker thus introduces combat of comparison within the minds of the
audience, and teases the rewards of self-enjoyment and pleasure that may result from subscribing
to the speaker’s message.

Role of the Audience: Observing and Imagining the Socially Valued Subject
The audience member to a stylistic testimony is an observer. In effect of being present to
observe the speaker’s narrative, the audience is inextricably involved in it and they are able to
know the narrative as the narrative relates to their own experience. As an observer, external
response or participation is not required, but it does suggest that the observer will engage
internally, with thought formation or imagination, so that he may follow the speaker’s narrative
(Hopkins, 2019).
Imagining oneself in relation to the narrative invites comparison of sameness and
difference, paralleling the speaker’s structure of creating sameness and difference by praising or
shaming the subject of discussion (Ahumada & Jung, 2013). Steinvorth elaborates on this
further by explaining an audience-observer’s experience of hearing a story that is not specific to
the observer’s own experience but that is still relatable:
My consciousness of my having a mental phenomenon such as pain or an impulse relates
me, the acting person, to me, the person that experiences. It enables me to respond to my
experiences [and] makes me self-reflective and self-conscious. By such self-

28
consciousness I become more than a member of a community on which otherwise my
experiences and actions would entirely depend, rendering me nothing but an ensemble of
the social relations. Yet that I am no more than an ensemble of my social relations is
suggested by Wittgenstien’s account of how we learn to speak, presenting us as a
dependent on our language community, which by its public concepts forms our way to
think, feel and act. (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 177)
Observing the speaker’s testimony, the listener may find himself to either embody the
characteristics or values that the speaker promotes; or, conversely, the listener may recognize
points of difference, which may encourage him on some level to aspire to achieve or align with
the ideal forms that the speaker presents (Elsby, 2013).
The speaker’s presentation of prioritized ideas and qualities ushers conformity to the
identity and habit the testimony endorses. The observer becomes a (perhaps unwilling)
participant to habit or identity formation, under the influence of the speaker (Ahumada & Jung,
2013). Though passive as observers, the audience is prompted to compete—with the content of
the narrative, and, now, with one another, as the pattern of self-relating to another’s story
tightens the metric by which to measure the self against (Steinvorth, 2013). The audience is
influenced to desire that other people “think [they] are special,” just as they believe the content
of the narrative to be somehow special (Elsby, 2013, p. 115). Internally recognizing that one
stands to lose something by failing accomplish that sense of special—that imagined purity and
perfection that the narrative alluded to—grooms the audience to be receptive to the idea of
conformity or agreement to someone else’s idea. The audience is susceptible to the willful
abandonment of personal social beliefs or values so that they, too, can imagine that they meet the
standards worthy of praise or blame that the speaker established (Elsby, 2013; Duncan, 2019).

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IV. Aesthetic Testimony
Deliberative Nature of Aesthetic Testimony
Aesthetic
1
is concerned with beauty, what it is for something to be considered beautiful,
appreciation of the beautiful, and assessment of the overall pleasantness of something
(“Aesthetic,” 1797; Slater, n.d.). Aesthetic is a “set of principles that guide the work of a
particular movement,” and is grounded in “taking interest in the emotion and presentation of an
object” (“Aesthetic,” 1797). Aesthetic maintains that beauty is something worthy of
consideration, attention, and interest; the beautiful is virtuous and good, and it should be aspired
toward, and as such, aesthetic seeks to know the beautiful in its most perfect and ideal forms
(Slater, n.d.). By that principle, aesthetic—having appreciation for the beautiful, good, and
pleasantness of something—cannot be known in absolute terms: aesthetic requires experience,
engagement, and the presentation of a possible truth about the beautiful, so that it may be
reflected and deliberated upon (Slater, n.d.). As a matter of tastes and preferences, aesthetic is
compounded based on the belief statements of what people agree or disagree to be true about
what the beautiful is or ought to be (Slater, n.d.). Exploration of aesthetic, and appreciation of
the beautiful, constitutes a testimony (Robson, 2013).
Pessimistic views on aesthetic testimony suggest that it would be improper to make
assertions about aesthetic and the beautiful based on testimonial claims, given the subjective
nature of personally narrated truth-claims (Nguyen, 2017). In his analysis of pessimistic

1
Aesthetic is borrowed from German ästhetisch "pertaining to taste or discernment,"
borrowed from New Latin aestheticus, borrowed from Greek aisthētikós "of sense
perception, sensitive, perceptive," from aisthētós "sensible, perceptible" (verbal adjective
of aisthánomai, aisthánesthai "to perceive, take notice of, understand," (“Aesthetic,” 1797).

30
response to aesthetic testimony, Jon Robson’s Aesthetic Testimony and the Norms of Belief
Formation (2013) explains:
For the most part, pessimists embrace the ‘unavailability pessimism’ claim—the claim
that we are unable to legitimately form aesthetic beliefs on the basis of testimony because
some feature (or features) of the aesthetic case means that knowledge of aesthetic value is
unavailable to us as testimony. (Robson, 2013, p. 750)
However, aesthetic testimony introduces claims that are inquisitive in nature; because the claims
aspire to define what constitutes the beautiful in its most perfect and ideal form, they are
categorically separate from testimonial assertions about what is certain about the past or
confirmed about the present. Aesthetic testimony speaks to and about something unknown—
imaginary—but that is believed to be knowable, given the context of lived experience and the
consideration for what could be. This reference to abstraction and ideas does not require
exclusive accuracy because an individual’s belief need not be based on first-hand experience
(Nguyen, 2017).
Instead, aesthetic testimony inspires ideological perspective on what it is that people are
working toward or aiming to access or achieve. In its process, aesthetic testimony provokes
thought, action, and deliberation amongst the audience by prompting that the audience
experience aesthetic for themselves. In support of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Keren
Gorodeisky notes:
Testimony may have an important role to play in our arriving at aesthetic judgment. For
example, it can give me information that I need in order to make an aesthetic judgment,
or help me see the beauty of the object more clearly. However, it cannot be the sole basis
of my aesthetic judgment. (Gorodeisky, 2010, p. 55)

31
Each individual may then attempt to know what it is for something to be beautiful, virtuous,
good, or what will be required to do the most good for the most people. And while each
individual’s experience or taste may maintain as being specific to that individual, or while one
individual may find some elements of the beautiful to be more pleasing than other elements, each
individual can appreciate aesthetic and what it moves people toward. Offering aesthetic
testimony to others so that they may take it in involves that the audience will actively attempt to
reconcile what they desire to be by taking action to make it so (Gorodeisky, 2010). The audience
yields expectation for a final outcome because aesthetic testimony encourages not that they know
the fact of the matter at present, but that they be moved to get to know the truth of the matter by
personally navigating through propositions about what the truth ought to be (McKinnon, 2017, p.
177). Having witnessed aesthetic testimony, the audience adopts agency and a mindset on how
to live, how to be, and how to promote the beautiful, the good, and collective well-being, making
the “assertions based on isolated second-hand knowledge appropriate, [and reinforcing] that
hearers can come to know aesthetic via testimony” (McKinnon, 2017, p. 177).

Aim of Aesthetic Testimony
The rhetorical objective of deliberative communication is either to persuade or dissuade
the audience to take action in anticipation of the future, primarily by stimulating the audience’s
appreciation for the subject matter (Vico, 1996). Vico explains that in speaking to the potential
of the future, an imagined ideal, and the possibility of doing the most good for the most people,
the speaker’s narrative plays on the audience’s emotions of hope and despair so as to highlight
that acting out of love, good will, and kindness to pursue the good will be useful and will serve
the best interest of the group (Vico, 1996). Similarly, speaking about achieving the

32
advantageous reminds the audience which evils should be avoided, further shepherding which
actions the listeners ought to take (Vico, 1996). Aesthetic testimony thus puts the audience
under particular influence, calling them forth to engage in a normative assessment of and
response to the subject. As the speaker identifies that the subject matter is relevant and worthy
of being paid attention to, the audience is made aware (or reminded) of what is standard, normal,
and behaviorally practiced with respect to happiness, virtue, self-sufficiency, and overall
pleasantness (Aristotle, 2007). This tasks the audience with assessing those standards and then
deciding whether those existing standards should or should not be left alone.
By moving the audience to consider, make a decision about, and take action regarding
what they come to believe will serve collective good, well-being, and progress toward the
beautiful, aesthetic testimony triggers what Steinvorth calls the modern imperative: people
thinking, acting, and living in the present under the guide of intrinsic motivations (Steinvorth,
2013). In The Uses of Aesthetic Testimony (2017), C. Thi Nguyen explained:
These positive cases [of aesthetic testimony] seem to have their own distinctive character:
they are usually cases in which one uses testimony to generate a belief about what action
one should take, rather than as the grounds for some sort of considered aesthetic
judgment. (Nguyen, 2017, p. 20)
Aesthetic testimony exposes audiences to ideas and invites response, but does not demand a
specific course of action or extrinsic good: it does not seek justice for a past action as moral
testimony does, nor does it seek to move an audience to condition behavior for the purpose of
self-pleasure.
Instead, aesthetic testimony leaves the audience empowered “do something for its own
sake, to pursue intrinsic goals, [and] to do intrinsic actions by following action-immanent

33
rationalities” based upon their own internal processing of the information and experience they
have witnessed (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 9). With no expectation of accomplishing a deliverable end
or noble victory, the expectation or mindset is simply that people act and do things for their own
sake—or appreciate the beautiful for its being beautiful—because it is believed to be in a
collective best interest (Steinvorth, 2013). Engaging with the ideas of aesthetic testimony is the
means, it is not ever meant to be an end. There is belief, there is hope, and that is enough.

Narrative Process of Aesthetic Testimony: The Practice of Activating and Deliberating Aesthetic
Narrative
As a deliberative rhetoric, aesthetic testimony directs attention toward something
imaginable so that it may be acted upon: beauty, happiness, virtue, and pleasantness (Aristotle,
2007). Whether explained through text, visual, or oral communication, aesthetic testimony
describes the properties of objects, it does not presume to define the object in its entirety
(Hopkins, 2006). The narrative offers ideas and examples of what could be within a framework
of what currently is, limiting consideration only to the belief in what is or is not possible
(Aristotle, 2007). Given that the narration is representative of an experience or prompts
imagination of an experience based on the presentation of properties, it is possible for the
audience to appreciate the aesthetic from the testimony despite not necessarily having
experienced that aesthetic first-hand (Hopkins, 2006). Aesthetic testimony extends a connection
between familiarity and knowledge, making it “possible to find (and to know one has found)
another object that shares all the relevant properties, such that if the one has aesthetic feature F,
so does the other” (Hopkins, 2006, p. 88).

34
Pictures, art, and other representations of aesthetic allow the viewing audience to acquire
knowledge about the object without having been present to the object him or herself. The same
is true of moral and epidictic narrative testimonies; the difference, however, is that the aesthetic
narrative requires that the audience then discover further, for himself, by seeking the first-hand
experience to confirm the truth of the initial testimony (Hopkins, 2006). Hopkins illustrates this
by stating:
Looking at pictures of things cannot be treated as a special form of reliance on testimony.
I see nothing wrong with the idea that pictures can be vehicles of testimony, as can
words. However, they do not testify to their object’s aesthetic properties. A picture of a
beautiful object is not the equivalent of a description asserting that it is lovely. The
picture doesn’t demand our agreement with the claim that the thing is beautiful, for it
doesn’t make that claim at all. Rather, it shows us the object’s other properties, and
thereby puts us in a position to judge the thing’s beauty for ourselves. Hence if two
disagree over the beauty of what is depicted, neither need take himself to be rejecting the
content of the picture, rather than the judgment his companion made on that
basis…[Pictures] allow not merely for the formation of aesthetic belief, but for the full-
blooded reactions, be they affective, cognitive or whatever, which are, in the aesthetic
case, the grounds for belief. (Hopkins, 2006, p. 91)
As Hopkins notes in this passage, aesthetic testimony does not require confirmation of the truth
of something known; it introduces the audience to act or experience that which it references, so
that they can know and judge for themselves. The narration introduces what is possible to know,
by activating imagination, and makes the viewer curious to be able to know—the viewer engages
in knowledge of aesthetic, intrinsically, (and the ability for know) for knowledge’s own sake.

35
For example, suppose the aesthetic of the Notre Dame Cathedral were under
consideration. Perhaps, amongst the speaker and the audience, the speaker is the only person
whom has personally experienced the Notre Dame Cathedral through his own senses—standing
before it, looking upon it, walking inside of it, listening to the sounds within its echo chambers,
smelling its somewhat stale air and old engaging in its physical space. The audience is then left
to rely upon the description of the cathedral, or viewing an image of it as it is presented. Should
the speaker reveal a photograph of the cathedral to the audience, that he himself took, the
experiences are similar, but not the same. Even assuming that the experiences are simulated to
be as similar to one another as possible—the photo taken represents the speaker’s physical
orientation to the object, the time of day the speaker viewed the object, et cetera—viewing a
picture of the front of the Notre Dame is different from standing in front of it in person. The
same would be true should one hear a meticulous and detailed description of the cathedral; the
audience can imagine it, understand it, and believe it, but does not yet know it. These
representations of the experience are derivative of the speaker’s first-hand experience. That is
not to say, however, that the derivative experiences are inadequate. The audience now possesses
information, exposure, and perception of the Notre Dame that they otherwise may not have had,
advancing them to a place for inquiry or judgment about the qualities, values, or truths about the
aesthetic of Notre Dame.
This transmissibility is dependent upon imagination. This is true of moral and stylistic
testimony, too, in that the narratives, regardless of their form, articulate ideas that exist as
representations of a (potentially) lived first-hand experience. Discerning a value or belief from
aesthetic representations are no less accessible or true than discerning a value or belief from any
other narrative format. If a judicial rhetoric can form a belief about something by investing in

36
the truth of a testimonial account of a witness, deliberative rhetoric can surely then form a belief
about something by accrediting some truth to the aesthetic testimony of a representative art form
or display. Aesthetic testimony is “a route to aesthetic belief,” such that the audience can inform
judgment about an object, so that he may later explore and know the object:
[I]f I can judge the elegance of a face in visualizing it, surely I can equally judge the
beauty of a melody in imagining how it would sound, and likewise for whatever aesthetic
properties figure in the ‘baser’ senses. (Hopkins, 2006, p. 93)
This route to aesthetic belief, too, reminds that the testimony is a descriptive of what can, and
that knows no finality. There is not one way to achieve an imagined outcome, for it is not
necessarily an outcome that is desired; the prompting of intrinsic action stimulates anticipation,
“turning the most vital activities into spheres with immanent rationality standards, [and] makes
societies pluralistic and people autonomous” (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 11). The aesthetic testimony
narrative activates deliberation and agency amongst individuals, but also, amongst a greater
collective, and as each agent then begins to acts intrinsically for the good and toward the
aesthetic of the beautiful, independently and communally, individuals develop an ethics of care,
conscious and considerate of the other’s experience.

Role of the Speaker: Knowing Full Well and Enticing Belief
As aesthetic testimony directs attention to the negotiated space between what is known
and what is imagined to be knowable in the future, it is empowered by the imagination. The
speaker must, in essence, persuade the audience aided by the visual presentation of ideas, be it
through “seeing, seeing pictures, [or seeing through] visual imagining” (Hopkins, 2006, p. 93).
To make a judgment about the aesthetic value of something—to know the aesthetic value of

37
something—is different than to have a belief in the aesthetic value of something (Hopkins,
2006). As it will later fall upon the audience to make a deliberative judgment about the aesthetic
value or best course of action, the speaker’s primary objective, then, is to move the audience to
believe, so that the audience can later make that judgment (Hopkins, 2006).
While it is not the duty of the speaker to enforce or persuade the audience of the fact or
final truth of aesthetic, the speaker does present an account with an intention to inspire belief in
the aesthetic idea. With the hope and intention that the audience will be moved toward belief
and may later make a decision based on that belief, the speaker’s action of making aesthetic
testimony does suggest that the speaker is making “a speech act of assertion” from some position
of insight or with some knowledge that the audience does not possess (McKinnon, 2017, p. 190).
Speaking to abstract matters, ideals, or possibilities in the future does not necessarily qualify the
speaker as being an expert of the subject matter, because he speaks to something that is still
unknown; yet, in providing aesthetic testimony, as a witness making that claim, the speaker must
maintain a credibility, an authority, and a legitimacy over the knowledge that he claims, or, at the
very least, over the knowledge which he hopes to direct discovery toward (Nguyen, 2017).
In How to be an Optimist About Aesthetic Testimony (2017), Rachel McKinnon explains
this diluted expertise as being in line with Ernest Sosa’s proposal of what it is to “know full
well,” in such that to know something is to have and maintain an “apt belief” in it (McKinnon,
2017, p. 183). To have apt belief in something is to believe the object to be “accurate (true),
adroit (skillfully believed), and accurate because it is adroit” (McKinnon, 2017, p. 183). With
this apt belief in the subject and speaking from first-hand experience, the aesthetic testimony
witness is accredited with knowing the subject full well—or as well as he may be able to know
that subject (McKinnon, 2017). Just as is true of any other witness making a testimonial claim,

38
the speaker and his knowledge is significant because the audience (especially when asked to
believe so that they may later know for themselves) is ultimately reliant upon the person who
may be able to answer what they themselves cannot (McKinnon, 2017). The speaker is
responsible with answering with the same level of belief that the speaker hopes to foster amongst
his audience (McKinnon, 2017).

Role of the Audience: Get to Know—Participate, Engage, Entangle
As an audience to aesthetic testimony, the hearer is meant to make a value-based decision
based upon the information presented (Aristotle, 2007). This value-based decision requires
careful assessment; deliberation and weighing what was brought to attention, so that the hearer
may choose to act in such a manner that the hearer believes will accomplish the most good or
well being (Aristotle, 2007). Having the active capacity to deliberate, to think, and to choose
makes the audience an agent of the overall narrative that speaks to something in the future;
ultimately, the audience has a responsibility regarding what is done, or, equally so, what is not
done as a result of the proposed ideas (Aristotle, 2007). Because the hearer is entrusted with
making a deliberative choice, and may choose to take responsibility to act to shape the formation
of an ongoing narrative, until the hearer can get to know for himself (or until the hearer can even
decide to get to know the subject matter for himself), the hearer must first believe in and rely
upon the aesthetic testimony that is shared with him (McKinnon, 2017).
McKinnon explains that it is essential to allow the hearer to believe the testimony as
being true by summarizing Christopher Insole’s concept of the Presumptive Right: a hearer has
“an epistemic right to believe testimony merely on the grounds that it has been asserted”
(McKinnon, 2017, p.178). If the aspiration of aesthetic and aesthetic testimony is to move

39
toward something more perfect, more beautiful, and truly good in all virtue, it is presumed that
the testimony is offered and held to the same values of truth, good, well-being and best interest.
The hearer, observer, and audience member must come to know for himself later, but to be
moved to get to know, that hearer, observer, or audience member must be grounded in belief in
that which he has been introduced to (Hopkins, 2006).
Further, Hopkins notes that it is because of aesthetic testimony’s stimulation of belief and
curiosity to know that the hearer evolves from a position of being a critic left to render an
evaluation of something; aesthetic requires that the hearer be present beyond initial belief, and
experience the subject, so that he may know the subject, and make a decision from knowledge,
rather than making a decision about a future based upon a speaker’s anticipated reality:
If the Acquaintance Principle
2
excludes both reliance on testimony and reliance on
inference, one might wonder what sense it can make of the role of the critic…Critics
cannot be those issuing authoritative judgments to guide the rest of us, since no one
should take her aesthetic belief on trust from another. (Hopkins, 2006, p. 89; footnote
mine)
For this reason, Hopkins suggests modifying Wollheim’s Acquaintance Principle to be such that:
S’s belief on an aesthetic matter is legitimate only if (1) S has either (i) experienced for
herself, (ii) seen a picture of it, or (iii) sensorily imagined, the object that belief concerns
and (2) grasps in experience (of the relevant form) that the belief is true. (Hopkins, 2006,
p. 94)

2
Robert Hopkins’ 2006 work, How to Form Aesthetic Belief: Interpreting the Acquaintance
Principle, critiques and presents a modification to Richard Wollheim’s Acquaintance Principle.
Hopkins summarizes Wollheim’s Acquaintance Principle to be such that judgments on aesthetic
value must be derived from first-hand experience and are only transmissible between persons in
extremely limited circumstances (Hopkins, 2006).

40
This modification allows the audience to direct their own approach to knowledge of aesthetic, of
the good, of the beautiful, because their belief has been validated in less stringent terms than
Wollheim required. The audience can believe in the prospect of knowledge, because the speaker
has guided them to believe in it through imaginary but realistic means.
In this way, the significance of the audience surpasses that of the speaker from having
been introduced to the aesthetic testimony at all, as the speaker is now reduced to being a critic
in some point of stasis, rather than the audience-agent who may move the narrative along with
the foundation of having manifested true belief. The speaker-critic whom has introduced the
narrative or belief about the aesthetic ideal is one “skilled at bringing [others] to see for
[them]selves the truth of the aesthetic claims” in so far as it becomes necessary for the audience
to get to know the truth of the aesthetic claim for himself, because “there is no such thing as
vicarious merit” (Hopkins, 2006, p.90; Lebell, 1994, p. 20). As aesthetic is something that is
embodied, known to and for the individual, the agent must experience through sensory and
personal encounter: he must participate, engage, and become entangled within it so that he may
believe it and know what is pleasing, beautiful, and good.
The speaker’s aesthetic testimony granted the hearer belief; the hearer then manifests a
sense of autonomy, as a new active witness, to contribute to a greater (and more collective)
aesthetic testimony. This aspiration to know promotes “self-assertion [which then] encourages
intrinsic interaction, [forming] the basis of community,” where individuals seek to know for the
sake of knowing, and knowing for their own sake (Steinvorth, 2013, pp. 30-31). This intrinsic
motivation is strengthened by Epictetus’ suggestion that one can

41
…[n]ever depend on the admiration of others [because] there is no strength in it.
Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source [nor can it be] achieved through
our associations with people of excellence. (Lebell, 1994, p. 19)
Merit and the validity of knowing must be a personal endeavor. Looking to make informed
judgment and decisions for something beyond the individual self involves acting both
independently, and acting together. Hopkins articulates that this participation in aesthetic
practice is powerful for each contributor, as an observer, and as one who can then shape further
belief by confirming or comparing his own experience of aesthetic to an other’s:
Since no aesthetic property depends on every property of an object, it should always in
principle be possible to find (and to know one has found) another object that shares all
the relevant properties, such that if one has aesthetic feature F, so does the other.
(Hopkins, 2006, p.88)
Sharing the responsibility of contributing to the narrative whilst engaged in intrinsic action to
know for the sake of knowing for oneself populates a community of collective others. Each self
is different from the other and may have a different first-hand experience of seeking aesthetic,
understanding the good and the beautiful, yet, from the broader perspective, as each other is
motivated by similar intrinsic action, the collection of independent others becomes a bonded
community with an overlapping social voice and a commitment to the “conception of living life
well” (Littman, 2013a, p. 219).
Aesthetic testimony dares not be stuck in time or in place. It dares not promise a
particular or singular perfection in the future. Aesthetic testimony provokes that people come to
know it, so that they may experience it and contribute to it themselves, freely, for their own sake,
and for the sake of others.

42
V. Introduction to Hopepunk
Hopepunk: Based on an Idea
On July 27, 2017, author Alexandra Rowland posted an ambiguous statement to her
personal Tumblr blog profile that had a whisper-like and secretive tone behind it: “The opposite
of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on” (Rowland, 2017). Grimdark is a sub-genre of fantasy
literature predicated on nihilism and the assumption that humanity is plagued by selfishness and
malice, and that the world exists simply to perish (Hopkins, 2019). Its themes and plot lines
suggest the world is in a state of decline, and that it is continually falling victim to evil—the
glass is only ever capable of being half full (Hopkins, 2019). Recognizing that grimdark was
beginning to extend beyond the realm of fictional narratives and was penetrating into the social
and cultural dimensions of modern life, Rowland took an interest in changing the course of the
current narrative, encouraging people to pull themselves out of the darkness (Hopkins, 2019).
Rowland manifested the concept of and coined the term ‘hopepunk,’ and within one year’s time
of releasing her singular statement into the ether of the blogosphere, hopepunk evolved from
being an aesthetic idea into a full-fledged social movement and way of being (Romano, 2018;
Lendof, 2017).
Hopepunk does not attempt to distort reality by way of ignoring or suppressing the
difficult challenges that individuals and larger communities face on a day-to-day basis—it does
not linger on the fantastical idea of achieving a perfect future or promise a utopia. Rather, in
recognizing the convenience of succumbing to despair in times of trouble or hardship, Rowland’s
hopepunk revives what it is to hope, and what it is to invest in an alternative by “requiring a
certain sense of will” (Anders & Newitz, 2019). Taking pause to consider the word hopepunk

43
itself, it is easy to recognize hope and punk. Independently, these concepts are familiar and
recognizable, though, they also seem to exist at true (or at least spiritual) odds with one another.
Hope, based in emotion, is a state of mind (Anders & Newitz, 2019). It is important to
note the distinction and difference between hope and optimism, here: optimism projects that
‘better’ is inevitable, and that humanity is intrinsically good (Anders & Newitz, 2019).
Optimism suggests that perfection is possible because the world simply is good and is meant to
achieve the ideal form (Anders & Newitz, 2019). This promise of perfection leaves optimists to
expect perfection; it is convenient to observe optimism as it allots for a causal indifference
toward making change or responding to the state of things as they are, because there is an
opportunity to default to and accept things as they are while under the impression and illusion
that things will either ‘get better,’ or that there is no need for them to get better, because they
already are as good as they can or should be. With optimism, when looking at the water glass,
the glass is always seen as half-full; the half-full glass is as perfect as the half-full glass can be,
because half of the glass of water is the best of what was available. Hope, on the other hand,
does not maintain the conviction that things will get better, nor does it resign to accepting things
as they currently are simply because they currently are. Hope wrestles with the notion that there
is water in the glass, and that it is present, but wonders about that water being in the glass at all.
Instead, hope accounts for the possibility of doing better. Because it recognizes that there
is no certainty to any desired outcome, hope becomes a measure for the attitude toward a work in
progress. Now, when looking at water in the glass, it is not the point to measure one’s
perspective of its being half empty or half full; the point is that there is water in the glass at all,
and that water is significant (Johnson, 2018). Something worthy is in sight, irrespective of what
may be framing or currently defining that thing for what it is. The power of will is necessary

44
when mentally and emotionally committing to having hope, and having hope elicits a call to
action with full awareness that circumstances will oscillates between the good and the bad. This
affects cognizance as the individual now recognizes agency over his own attention; humility
within the self, and curiosity for and about the other (Anders & Newitz, 2019). With increased
sense of awareness for the self and the other, and with an intrinsic motivation to see and achieve
the good, hope emanates agape and empathy, urging greater well-being. To have care and be
interested to take care—to be kind and to love—catalyzes hope from being an emotion into
something active (“Kind,” n.d.). Hope has agency.
Looking to the suffix-anchor of the hopepunk concept, we find punk: a noun known to
relate to persons, things, or styles of a rebellious, grunge, edgy, inexperience, or that are
sometimes considered to be nonsensical in nature (“Punk,” n.d.). In an interview with Rob
Hopkins (2019), Rowland noted that she
…want[ed] to emphasize that ‘punk’ is the operative half of the word ‘hopepunk.’ It is
about actively taking action…and standing up against authority and being the person to
stand up for people who are being marginalized or oppressed, or hurt by people of
authority. (Hopkins, 2019)
For Rowland, punk is the element that gives the hopepunk movement its driving force and
tenacity to accomplish something beyond the individuals who engage with the hopepunk
mentality intrinsically (Hopkins, 2019). The ‘punk’ articulates that there is something
unconventional about what is being done; it lies outside the ring of normal, typical, or what is
conventionally being practiced. To ‘punk’ anything requires rebellion, and a desire to conquer
friction that exists between the concepts of presence and potential. For Rowland,

45
Hopepunk isn’t about moral perfection. It’s not about being as pure and innocent as the
new-fallen snow. You get grubby when you fight. You make mistakes...[but] you get
up, and you keep fighting, and caring. (Rowland, 2017)
Hopepunk is eager to push back against the current state of being, to break out of the apocalyptic
cultural weather storm, and refuses to accept that grim and bleak is the new, acceptable standard
(Merriam-Webster, n.d.; Lee, 2019; Moore, 2019).

Hopepunk: An Idea with Movement
Still in the infant stages of its development, hopepunk does not yet have a formal
foundation of philosophy or logic, it knows no set of rules. While philosophy and truth cannot
“do without reason,” Steinvorth highlights that it is significant to recognize that “ideas can come
first and good reasons later…[because] ideas have the capacity to move us purely through
passion” (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 9). Because activation is the priority, hopepunk is content, for
now, to be a movement spurred by an idea (Rambo, 2019). Rowland points out that for people to
best understand hopepunk, they must participate in it beyond thinking about it for its ideology:
Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires
bravery and strength. Hopepunk is not ever about submission or acceptance: it’s about
standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people.
It’s about demanding a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if
we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in out
little hearts. (Rowland, 2017)
Hopepunk carries intention into practice, as its agents look wherever they can to embody love,
kindness, and respect as a mechanism to resist the burdening weight of the grim social narrative

46
the world continues to nurture (Romano, 2018; Richardson, 2019; Merriam-Webster, n.d.).
Prioritizing kindness, though, does not equate to being nice; embodying and acting out of love,
kindness, and respect “means defending the moral norms that are right and not just the ones that
are popular” (Lee, 2019). Working through the present and toward the good, priding value sets
of kindness and communal well-being, hopepunk “weaponizes optimism” (Romano, 2018).
It is through the pushback and the action that kindness through hopepunk is not just an
individual’s approach to being polite or content with internal optimism (Hudson, 2016). While it
manifests internally and intrinsically, hopepunk’s determination to know kindness, love, care,
goodness, and the beautiful, is one that seeks to know it for the self, and for the other. To know
it is to participate in it, and ultimately contribute to a greater collective—being kind while in
kind
3
. Rowland shared how she imagines that kindness can be more than etiquette practice, and
that in this moment in time, people may need to be reminded of what kindness can accomplish:
Kindness doesn’t necessarily mean softness. Kindness is something you can go out and
fight for. You’re contributing to the future. You’re putting more good into the world.
(Hopkins, 2019)
Putting more good into the world does not guarantee a happy ending, but it does reflect that the
ending is not lost (Vogel, 2018; Konstantinou, 2019). There is work to be done, work that is
infinite, but “the very act of trying has meaning,” and that commitment to the unknowable brings
value to hopepunk (Festive Ninja, n.d.; Burt, 2019a; Burt, 2019b).

3
Kind, as a noun, refers to “a group of people or things having similar characteristics, character
or nature” (“Kind,” n.d.). To be “in kind” suggests that things are in the same way, or are in
likeness with something similar (“Kind,” n.d.). Kind, in origin, is related to kin, speaking to
natural order and innate characters, forms, or conditions (“Kind,” n.d.). As an adjective, kind
suggests one as “having or showing a friendly, generous, or considerate nature,” and being
“affectionate or loving” (“Kind,” n.d.).

47
Hopepunk as Aesthetic Testimony
Hopepunk started as a whispered idea in 2017 (Rowland, 2017). Two years later,
‘hopepunk’ was a top-ten contender amongst words to be considered as dictionary
lexicographers’ official ‘word of the year’ (Hanson, 2019). Creatively imagined to shift the axis
of the contemporary social narrative, Alexandra Rowland introduced a new aesthetic, and with it,
gave people something to believe in with her own hope that those people could come to know,
appreciate, and experience something alternative, good, kind, and beautiful. Recognizing that
they have the ability to change the narrative being told about the current state of the world and
global crisis by authoring a narrative on their own terms, people took (and now take) to
hopepunk as a way to make a claim about the truths they seek, and the truths they live in the
midst of that process (Richardson, 2019; Wagner, 2018). Testimony has transformed from being
an evidentiary tool of logic to prove something to render judgment; it now has the capability to
exist as a movement. Aesthetic testimony, particularly through the means of hopepunk, carries
energy with it, and through active participation, is always building upon itself (Vogel, 2018).
Telling the story while working through the contemporary moment draws a following, gains
traction and attention, and invites people to witness it.
Testimony is no longer an isolated recall to an isolated incident of the past: testimony is
staking claim over and about what we do, in the present, with mental commitment to believing
that what is being done is what is best to do now and for the future. Testimony does not need to
be burdensome as a solution or resolution to something that occurred; it can be an exploration in
curiosity and belief that looks not to deliver a final product, but simply looks to imagine, narrate,
and seek truth for the sake of imagining, narrating, and seeking truth. Steinvorth observed that,
“[m]odernization proves…to be the replacing of extrinsic with intrinsic goals…[and] such a

48
replacement shifts interest from given goals to exploring action possibilities, from routine to
discovery and invention, from labor to play,” because there is pleasure and good in the
experience of getting to know (Steinvorth, 2013, p. 20).
As a word, a concept, and in its grassroots communication forms, hopepunk was
premised in fiction, fantasy, and imagination (Wagner, 2018; Hanson, 2019). While some of its
storytelling may exist in a fictional space, the content, intention, and thematic messaging is not
necessarily any less factual or authentic than any other form of testimony. It still originates from
knowledge, from lived experience, and from believed truths about the world, yet allows the
space to imagine further truth by inviting audiences to explore it. Fiction proposes ideas that are
oftentimes fantastical in concept, but only because they are contrary or different than the existing
reality of experienced reality and culture. Fiction has the capacity to shift public expectations by
moving people to desire an alternative—a potentially better alternative—than that which they
experience in the present. Fictional narratives have always been participant in “altering legal
processes,” by suggesting that a shift or change in existing social orders may be necessary, and
by giving people to think on, about, and entice them to respond to (Olson, 2014, p. 379).
Specifically within science fiction
4
, authors and narrators have an opportunity to colorfully
comment on nearly possible futures by highlighting a seemingly shorter timeline between what
realistically is and what realistically could very well end up being (Wagner, 2018).
In Oneself as Another (1995), Paul Ricoeur states that, “…it is precisely because of the
elusive character of real life that we need the help of fiction to organize life” (Ricoeur, 1995, p.
162). Again, narrative storytelling is a way to understand the world as people experience it, as

4
Science fiction is a sub-genre of fiction “dealing principally with the impact of actual or
imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting
component” (“Science Fiction,” 1851).

49
they imagine it to be, and as they seek to find truth within it. Fiction aides narrative development
as individuals look to connect information; perhaps in the process of looking for something new,
perhaps looking to something that may have been forgotten, or perhaps to look at things as they
are from an alternative perspective, particularly when what is believed to be known may reveal
that it is not truly known at all (Johnson, 2018). In a 2013 essay, Sons of History: How
SAMCRO Lost and Found its Way, Paul Fosl explained the gravitational aspect of imagination,
and how claims to knowledge are qualified in relation to one another as individuals imagine and
experience and share their imaginations with one another:
Human beings don’t live in a world of abstract, detached, universal concepts. We live as
located beings, in particular situations, socially linked and related to others through
imaginative tropes, images, metaphors, sympathies, and narratives. For Vico, it is
imagination that locates us, creating the common sense and common places of topics of
communal thinking, feeling, and acting without which we are lost. (Fosl, 2013, p. 192)
Imagination does not exist in isolation, or, if it does, its potentials are rather restricted. Multiple
vantage points and experiences stimulated by imagination foster discourse amongst and between
bodies (Fosl, 2013). The conversation and deliberation about ideas pushes individuals into a
greater collective, and reorients singular imagination into a greater narrative that will know
fuller, greater pleasure, good, and well being for all whom have contributed to imagining it. Fosl
further explains that when
One set of ideas goes head-to-head with another in a way that eventually overcomes the
limitations of each and raises thinking, even the social order, or even the world itself [can
be lifted] to a higher and better condition. (Fosl, 2013, p. 195)

50
As aesthetic exposure prompts imagination, ideas prompt thought, and in a curiosity to know
beyond initial belief in what is imagined, thought turns into action. To know hopepunk beyond
what one imagines it to be to “weaponize optimism,” one must experience it, in some form.
There still is no “true” form of hopepunk; yet, as each individual bears witness to the hopepunk
aesthetic, he simultaneously becomes an agent of the aesthetic movement. Each adventure
within hopepunk and iteration of what it is to be hopepunk carries forth the idea, the emotion, the
energy, and the affect. While autonomous and left to their own devices and curiosities, the
agents are in a constant state of deliberation, still under the collective guide of working toward a
common goal. Ultimately, those engaged and participant to hopepunk are granted a position of
authority over the decisions to be made and to make cooperative judgment, because they have
each autonomously experienced the situation for themselves (Gutting, 2019; Gamerman, 2019).

VI. Medium and Form of Testimony
The Credibility of Vehicles and Styles
With respect to judicial rhetoric, an audience will accept a narrative statement as accurate
and true testimony (so long as the audience finds the speaker and information to be credible). Be
it spoken, written, or captured into a visual form, under the protection of its allegiance to making
a truth claim and for the sake of ethics and moral principles, the audience accepts the narrative to
be testimonial: accurate in that it is evidentiary; documented; of record; bound. Considering
epidictic rhetoric, an audience will accept or reject a narrative based on emotional alignment,
dimension for parallels, and what is suiting to the self. Again, spoken, written, or perhaps in an
image, if the audience is led to find the subject worthy of praise or blame, based largely on
emotional registry, the testimony is acceptable, because it meets the needs or desires of the

51
current moment. It is of benefit for the individual to confirm or deny what has been brought to
his attention, whether there is any quantifiable truth or validity to the narrative or the respective
emotion now associated with the narrative.
If it can be the case that testimony is acceptable and true so long as there is belief in the
narrative as supported by what is known from an audience’s own relatable experience (in
observation or emotion), why, then, should it be impossible to accept the value of testimony that
comes from our active processes of coming to know through exploration and the consideration of
what we imagine the case to be?
Is the presentation of aesthetic testimony inherently of a lesser value simply because its
requirement for deliberation yields a response to a subject matter that cannot be confirmed as
being universally true? Does the profound agitation of aesthetic inquiry preempt that claims
about it can be registered, measured, or made to have value?
Is the credibility of testimony—moral, stylistic, or aesthetic—a measure of its vehicle of
transmission to the audience, a measure of its style of presentation, or, a measure of its purpose
and effect?
Is an expert’s scientific explanation more credible because of the narrative’s including the
details of quantitative information? What are numbers if not another language or dialect that
have been given meaning, and supported by an imagined idea? Numbers or other “evidentiary”
models have been accepted as a universal truth code because time, history, culture, need, and
social order has determined them to be true—or that they ought to be true.
Is a photograph any more real or true than a painting? True, a photograph documents a
machine’s exposure to a moment in time (Sontag, 2003). However, that photograph is also only
representative of the machine’s exposure to that moment in time as an extension of one person’s

52
encounter with that moment in time—it is a filtered and edited presentation of a singular
perspective, and for as much as may be captured within the frame of the photograph, there exists
the possibilities of everything it did not capture (Sontag, 2003). If the same moment in time
were to be captured and expressed through a painting, a drawing, a sculpture, or some audio
format, why should that alternative vehicle for information transmission be deemed less credible
or true? That vehicle or style of organizing the information has things in common with the
photograph: it is a replication of an individual’s encounter, as the individual believes it to have
occurred, from his own perspective. Is that representation of the encounter more knowable or
more truthful because it is transmitted in a photograph rather than in another art form?
Is the endorsement or condemnation of a subject more credible, simply because it is
convenient, agreeable, and achieves a sense of pleasure for the audience? (Particularly if that
audience has already been socially conditioned to align with the values under consideration for
praise or blame.)
Attributing value, credibility, and truthfulness to testimony and its narrative content is
reflective of what culture desires credibility to be, and where it is comfortable categorizing trust.
So long as it is agreed upon, merit can be derived from any vehicle or style of testimony; the
testimony, in its essence and epistemology, is simply a narrative, a presentation of ideas, beliefs,
justified based on interpretations of experience, and seeking to claim that narrative as being true.

The Graphic Novel is Nothing but a Medium and a Form
A graphic novel is a medium of dual forms: it stylistically transmits information through
both visual and text communications (Mondal & Banerjee, 2018; Blake, 2009). Given their
traditional association with fantasy, fiction, youth, simplicity, and cartoonish art, graphic novels

53
(and comics) are not conventionally consulted as sources for information or knowledge
(Spiegelman, 1996). Bridges highlights this by acknowledging her own tendency to refer to
comics as a “nostalgic art form” because even in growing in maturity of content over time,
hearing the word comic or the phrase graphic novel elicits a near knee-jerk association with
“childhood reading pleasures,” and stories about heroes wearing capes and taking on the
challenge of saving the world (Bridges, 2015, p. 353). In a similar vein, looking to history and
the power of the Greek myths, while they were epic fictions,
…we might also recognize that [Greek myths and fables] were attempts to make sense of
the world. Myths are not just for entertainment, but stories of the origins of things. For
the culture that subscribes to them, they have explanatory power. (Belsey, 2002, p. 39)
Perhaps it is because of those foundational qualities of simplicity and explanatory power
that the graphic novel is an apt platform to offer testimony. As testimony is a narrative
characterized by its relationship to the act of witnessing, Felman and Laub specify that, “[w]hat
ultimately matters in all processes of witnessing…is not simply the information, the
establishment of the facts, but the experience itself of living through testimony, of giving
testimony,” and the experience of having someone present to witness that testimony being given
(Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 85). The graphic novel is a space for a speaker—a witness to his or
her own experience—to relay a narrative to an audience, so that the audience may also witness
that narrative. The graphic novel’s depiction of testimony introduces new ways of thinking,
feeling, and acting because of its compounding affects (Savage, 2012).
The graphic novel is a testimonial medium and form that requests its audience to make a
judgment by its end, it is a narrative that is sought for pleasure or entertainment, and it is a
narrative that requires active participation and scope of imagination to be able to know. The

54
audience can believe the testimony for having been exposed to its content, know it for having
accessed the text and visual documentation, and understand it because witnessing that narrative
was a relatable experience for the audience, as they attempt to imagine, make sense of, and
reconcile what it is that they are engaged with while holding it in their hands. The graphic novel
is appropriate as a mode to transmit testimony because it is representative in nature, it is
relatable, and it is relevant to the post-modern moment of cultural fascination with and
dependency upon spectacle visual communication (Tadajewski, 2016).
Like a photograph, a graphic illustration is representative of an experience. Both
“reiterate…simplify…[and] agitate” those who encounter the representation, because the images
are evidentiary in nature (Sontag, 2003, p. 6). Seeing it, the witness recognizes the content and is
able to relate to it for what it represents, or, even if the witness fails to recognize the content for
what it represents, he is still able to find relation to that image based on having a difference to it.
There is a quality about the visual that lends the representation to being more real than what is
simply imagined, because it takes up a physical space and can be shown, making it relatable to
experiences of mind, and of body, by sharing that relatable experience with an other (Sontag,
2003). Similar, too, in that both a photograph and the literal frame of a graphic novel limit the
exposure to the experience the testimony aims to represent; arguably evidentiary in their capacity
to confirm what an individual can identify the image to represent, the images leave much room
for imagination:
Nowhere is the power of imagination more apparent than in the way that individual
works reanimate our horizons. For through giving voice to alternatives that they project,
such works also play a part in forming our hopes, fears, and expectations. (Savage, 2012,
p. 183)

55
Contextualizing and navigating the audience’s thought processes, the visual informs about what
it represents, and equally lends room for thought response: as it relates to an audience’s ethics
(what is sought for the good and feared for the bad), the image may direct moral action; as it
relates to an audience’s expectations, the image may reinforce feelings of praise or blame, and;
as it relates to an audience’s belief, its hope, the image may call forth a desire to get to know.
The graphic novel also has traction because it is easy for audiences to relate and connect
to. Its simple imagery and sound bite text delivers information to people with a sense of urgency
and quickness, but in a way that is easy to understand because of its basic character. Illustration
privileges our ability to understand from the position of being unrestricted to any one code of
oral language—illustration is, quite simply, expressive. It can communicate without having to
say a word. And in an ever-evolving global society and culture, what could hold as being more
universally true than the language of emotion? Belsey points out that, “if different languages
divide the world up differently, and if different cultures lay claim to distinct beliefs,” habit may
be the only thing that “makes ‘our’ [beliefs] more true than ‘theirs’” (Belsey, 2002, pp. 70-71).
Emotion is universally knowable, though; empathy it is relatable without subscribing to
particular cultural habit or practice because it is social by definition, a byproduct of “others’
thoughts, expressions, and feelings” that are relatable to the self (Mondal & Banerjee, 2018, p.
28). Relating to the emotions of others brings us comfort because we can take comfort in
knowing that they also relate to ours (Rambo). Even if ideas and cultures are different, we have
emotions in common (Balfe, 1987).
Finally, the testimony through a graphic novel is legitimate and credible because it is
relevant to and meets the rhetorical dimensions of the postmodern era. Offering testimony
through a platform that incubates knowledge by promoting explanation through (chosen)

56
entertainment is empowering for the contemporary audience who has culturally adopted
poststructuralist approaches to knowing the world. It is traditional in its longevity and
familiarity, but is alternative in what it can accomplish. The graphic novel medium owns a
unique territory over truth as audiences find trust in documentation, over pleasure as audiences
indulge in reading or viewing the art as a means to make them happy, and over engagement as
audiences are allowed to relate to the story in response to his or her own experience with it
(Gutting, 2019).

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SUMMARY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This study examines the ways in which the text and visual communication styles make
the graphic novel a strategic and effective rhetorical device for offering moral, stylistic, and
aesthetic testimony. Incorporating qualitative content analysis of visual images and quantitative
analysis of text content published on the social media platform Twitter, this project assesses the
effect of narrative framing on an audience’s willingness to accept and engage with the speaker’s
testimony. This project looks to find color in context within the existing palette of testimony,
and what rhetorically determines what it is to speak to survive, to thrive, or to be entangled in the
dimensions of aesthetic experience.

Research Question One (RQ1)
The first research question asked: “What does the testimony reveal about the identity
image of the speaker as a witness?” This question can be answered using descriptive statistics,
and also by conducting qualitative descriptive analysis of a sample of representative images from
each of the graphic novels.

Research Question Two (RQ2)
The second research question asked: “As a witness to the speaker’s experience, what
effect did reading, viewing, and interpreting the testimony have on the reader? Was the speaker
successful in his or her role offering testimony?” These questions can be answered using
qualitative descriptive analysis of a sample of representative images from each of the graphic
novels.

58
Research Question Three (RQ3)
The third research question asked: “How can we quantify the social utility of aesthetic
testimony as a mechanism to achieve hope, love, the good, and the beautiful?” This question can
be answered using text mining data analysis to evaluate the relationship between aesthetic
testimony and the audience’s affective response.

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METHOD
For the purposes of this critique on the rhetoric of moral, stylistic, and aesthetic
testimony, I examined the content within three graphic novels, evaluating how each of the novels
depicted what it is for a speaker and audience to survive, thrive, or come to know aesthetic
through testimonial narrative. The graphic novels were selected to represent each of the
respective forms of testimony. To sample moral testimony, I examined an autobiographical
account of surviving unjust arrest, imprisonment, and political persecution. To sample stylistic
testimony, I examined a realistic fiction narrative that attested to the life of a celebrity who lives
purely for self-pleasure and social affirmation, and whose credibility as a speaker is awarded for
simply showcasing and framing what it is to thrive by living a certain way. To sample aesthetic
testimony, I examined the concept of hopepunk as depicted and introduced in a science-fiction-
esque fantasy series.
This examination of testimonial forms involved two forms of research: content analysis
and text mining. The content analysis was particularly relevant in that the analysis of content
within graphic novels involved assessment of images, and what those images affectively
communicate to audiences and what those images communicate about culture (Budzise-Weaver,
2016; Howells et all, 2009; Mortensen et al., 2019). The text mining research was conducted to
further examine the social and cultural response to and engagement with the aesthetic testimony
of the hopepunk movement.

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I. Content Analysis
Sample
The content analysis sample was composed of three graphic novel series (and their
respective volumes contained therein): An Iranian Metamorphasis
5
; the first two volumes of a
continuing graphic novel series, Snotgirl, including Snotgirl, Volume 1: Green Hair Don’t Care
6
,
and Snotgirl, Volume 2: California Screaming
7
; and the full six-volume collection of the Paper
Girls
8
graphic novel series. This sample of combined text and visual narratives accounts for five
years of published content between 2014 and 2019.

Intercoder Reliability
9

Two training sessions were held using images from the graphic novel corpus that were
included in the final sample. The coders had discussions before, between, and after the two
training sessions that resulted in refining and defining the final codebook. The coders then
conducted a third examination of the corpus using the finalized codebook. The Cohen’s Kappas
measured as follows: Emotion of Character: 0.62; Power or Authority: 0.61; and People in the
Frame: 0.86.

5
An Iranian Metamorphosis is a 2014 work by Mana Neyestani (Neyestani, 2014).
6
Snotgirl, Volume 1: Green Hair, Don’t Care is the first volume of a continuing graphic novel
series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Leslie Hung, Mickey Quinn, and Maré Odomo (O’Malley et al.,
2017).
7
Snotgirl, Volume 2: California Screaming is the second volume of a continuing graphic novel
series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Leslie Hung, Rachael Cohen, and Mickey Quinn (O’Malley et
al., 2018).
8
Paper Girls is a six-volume series by Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson, and Jared
K. Fletcher (Vaughan et al., 2016a; Vaughan et al., 2016b; Vaughan et al., 2017; Vaughan et al.,
2018a; Vaughan et al., 2018b; and Vaughan et al., 2019).
9
Intercoder reliability was established in accordance with an established research practitioner
guide (Michaelson & Stacks, 2017).

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Coding and Variables
The graphic novels were reviewed and examined by two independent coders: one
graduate student from the University of Southern California, and one graphic designer. A total
of three variables were coded. The first of those variables, Emotion of Character, was defined as
being the perceived emotional state of the character(s) in the frame as depicted by his or her
facial expressions, body language, or gestures. The emotions were registered to include sadness,
fear, frustration, hope, happiness, and strength. Some limited examples of facial expressions or
bodily gestures that would constitute such emotions included, but were not limited to, crying,
smiling, widened eyes, clenched fists, et cetera. The second variable was coded as Power or
Authority, examining whether the central figure or primary character was in the presence of
another figure that stands to challenge, threaten, or subordinate the main character in some way.
Examples of this included, but were not limited to, the opposing character interfering with the
main character’s action, intention, or personal objective; the opposing character demanding or
suggesting that the main character comply with the opposing character’s command; or, the
opposing character showing some use of force or domination over the main character. The third
variable, People in the Frame, examined whether the frame depicted the main figure alone, the
main figure to be in the company of a friend, or the main figure to be in the presence of another
person that the main figure would not consider to be a friend. Examples of this included, but
were not limited to: the character alone; the character in the company of his wife; and, the
character in the company of a random prison mate. The full codebook can be reviewed in
Appendix A.

62
II. Text Mining
Sample
The sample data corpus used for the text mining analysis was composed of a total of 37
tweet messages as publicly published on the social media platform, Twitter. The 37 tweets were
harvested from Twitter using the accessibility function through the data processing software,
Orange3. The software collected any publicly released message on the Twitter platform
containing the following search locus: #hopepunk. The 37 tweets were written by different
authors (or twitter account users) and included content in each of the following languages:
Arabic, English, French; German; Oodo; Romanian, and; Spanish. This data sample accounted
for tweets using the phrase “#hopepunk” within a 24-hour period window of time, given the
limitation of the software and its accessibility to the greater Twitter platform.

Procedure
Through the accessibility function of the Orange3 data processing software, a graduate
student at the University of Southern California conducted a search on Twitter for any publicly
tweeted message containing the phrase “#hopepunk.” Twitter produced a data corpus of 37
independent tweets. The data corpus was then filtered by applying the preprocessing text
function so as to remove any repeated messages, URL links, unrelated content, sales promotions,
et cetera. With a cleaned data corpus, the researcher ran a topic modeling test; a sentiment
analysis test; and a word cloud test.
The topic modeling test was refined to assess ten topics using Latent Dirichlet Allocation
(LDA) to calculate the probability that certain words and/or themes would be associated with the

63
“#hopepunk” topic. The topics generated by the algorithmic assessment of the data corpus
revealed dominant topics and their percentage of contribution to the overall data corpus.
The sentiment and tonality analysis test assessed which emotions were found to be most
prominent within the content affiliated with the phrase, “#hopepunk.”
The word cloud test generated a visual graphic to portray which words were used, how
often they were used, and the strength to which they were used in relation to the phrase,
“#hopepunk.”

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RESULTS
The results of research questions one and two will be reported in response to each graphic
novel series analysis which shall appear in sequence as follows: An Iranian Metamorphosis
(Neyestani, 2014); Snotgirl (O’Malley et al., 2017; O’Malley et al., 2018); and, Paper Girls
(Vaughn et al., 2016a; Vaughn et al., 2016b; Vaughn et al., 2017; Vaughn et al., 2018a; Vaughn
et al., 2018b; Vaughn et al., 2019). A comprehensive report of the content analysis data and the
corresponding descriptive statistics can be reviewed in Appendix B, Appendix C, and Appendix
D, for An Iranian Metamorphosis, Snotgirl, and Paper Girls, respectively.
As research question three is specific to aesthetic testimony and hopepunk, the results
will be reported in the section dedicated to the Paper Girls analysis.

Research Question One (RQ1)
The first research question asked: “What does the testimony reveal about the identity
image of the speaker as a witness?” This question can be answered using descriptive statistics,
and also by conducting qualitative descriptive analysis of a sample of representative images from
each of the graphic novels.

Research Question Two (RQ2)
The second research question asked: “As a witness to the speaker’s experience, what
effect did reading, viewing, and interpreting the testimony have on the reader? Was the speaker
successful in his or her role offering testimony?” These questions can be answered using
qualitative descriptive analysis of a sample of representative images from each of the graphic
novels.

65
Research Question Three (RQ3)
The third research question asked: “How can we quantify the social utility of aesthetic
testimony as a mechanism to achieve hope, love, the good, and the beautiful?” This question can
be answered using text mining data analysis to evaluate the relationship between aesthetic
testimony and the audience’s affective response.

I. An Iranian Metamorphosis
Summary and Context
Mana Neyestani is a well-known Iranian political cartoonist and journalist (Neyestani,
2014). In 2014, he wrote and illustrated An Iranian Metamorphosis, to recall his own his
experience of being arrested, jailed, and politically persecuted by the Iranian government in 2006
after one of his cartoons was printed in a newspaper that caused (unintended) harsh public
backlash and violent riots (Neyestani, 2014). Neyestani’s cartoon was of a cockroach; the
cockroach was speaking the Azeri language, which is the common language of Iran’s minority
population (Neyestani, 2014). The Azeri community took Neyestani’s illustration to be
suggestive that the Azeri people were socially inferior, akin to vermin, and riots ensued
(Neyestani, 2014). The Iranian government then proceeded to arrest, detain, and delay
Neyestani’s release, despite the fact that he had not committed any true crime. Eight years later,
Neyestani wrote An Iranian Metamorphosis to tell the story of his own experience of being a
prisoner, being separated from his family and friends, being helpless with respect to seeking
information or help, and the journey he took to reclaim his freedom (Neyestani, 2014).

66
Research Question One (RQ1)
The results of the content analysis descriptive statistics report that the primary emotion
and tone throughout the novel was sadness, where the majority (54.88%) of the frames depicted
the primary character, Neyestani, as being upset, crying, helpless, deflated, et cetera (Appendix
B). Neyestani’s being in the presence of authority or some other dominating figure accounted
for approximately half of his experiences in the narrative (51.22%) (Appendix B). Finally, a
majority of the illustrations depict that Neyestani—as a prisoner, and later, as a witness recalling
his experience by writing about it—was left alone to keep his own company (62.12%), and if he
was in the presence of other individuals, those individuals seldom accounted for being anyone of
Neyestani’s own family or friend networks (Appendix B).
Looking to the illustration content of Neyestani’s testimony, Neyestani’s identity is
unmistakable: from the very beginning of his statement, Neyestani is a subject of discipline.
Beginning the story of his arrest and later imprisonment, Neyestani is seen sitting in a tiny school
desk as if in the midst of elementary instruction, despite his being an adult whom has far
outgrown both the literal dimensional space of the chair as well as the figurative social space that
the school child’s desk represents. Similar, too, the chair’s boxed architecture is mirrors the
physical space of a traditional witness stand (see Appendix E, Image 1). The chair is an
exoskeleton to Neyestani’s physical body, protecting and confining him in equal measure as the
reader can see the chair’s wooden frame extending just beyond the horizons of Neyestani’s body.
Again, like a witness stand in a judicial setting, the chair is a dedicated space for Neyestani to be
recognized as a figure to be paid attention to; the witness stand and school desk parallel suggests
that this is a dedicated space where Neyestani is meant to be recognized as a witness, as his

67
person is under the direction of another and is a participant to some form of instruction by being
asked questions and being expected to provide answers.
The reader can observe that Neyestani is very much so collapsed into himself, shrugged
and hunched over, resigned to the command of a government official who is demanding that
Neyestani remember the events that led to his arrest. The government official is insistent that
Neyestani start from the beginning, and that he not let any details of the story slip through the
cracks. Neyestani is seemingly under physical pressure sitting in the small chair: revealing that
the character is anxious, the illustration shows Neyestani’s facial expression to include raised
eyebrows and incorporates sketch details bouncing away from his head to signify nervousness as
the government official points his finger down at Neyestani. He is in some kind of mental duress
as well, being told that his answer “must be convincing” to the government, else, he will not be
freed, and he may be brought to “experts” who will “get the truth out of [him]” (Appendix E,
Images 3 and 4). Neyestani now does not simply have a duty to tell the story as it happened to
him, he is threatened with the possibility that his story may be deemed to be untrue based on
someone else’s perception or willingness to believe the story he tells. Should he fail to win the
minds of the government, he will remain powerless and submissive to the state. The reader can
observe the government official’s facial features as being sharp, pointed, and menacing,
matching the energy and body language of his accusatory finger. The government official’s
physical qualities possess an edge and sense of rigidity that is representative of danger; these are
physical qualities that Neyestani does not apply or incorporate when illustrating his own
character.
A second government official who appears later in the narrative, shown in Image 2, is
shown as being monstrous: he is aggressive and tense to the degree of revealing bulging veins in

68
his head; his tongue is serpent-like, extended outside of his mouth as he spits while screaming,
teeth fully exposed; his nose is crunched up toward his face as his eyes squint and his brow is
furrowed (Appendix E, Image 2). This official is furious, looking downward upon Neyestani,
making sure to remind Neyestani that his narrative must “stay inside the frame,” within the space
that has been allotted to him, regardless of whether that space is sufficient. These officials are
dictating how and to what extent Neyestani will be free to share his own experience, and he is in
no position to challenge their authority. Image 5 shows someone tying a blindfold across
Neyestani’s face (Appendix E, Image 5). His head is lowered in subtle defeat as his vision and
ability to observe and know his own experience is taken away from him, by someone else’s
hand. He is a prisoner in multiple forms: of the flesh while being physically detained, of the
mind with respect to what he is and is not allowed to know, and of identity as he has little
authority over how he is seen or may be seen by others.
Images 6 and 7 parallel the judicial experience of being on trial. Despite his own
innocence, the government has made Neyestani an object of its system—he is merely a part of a
process (Appendix E, Images 6 and 7). Neyestani still sits wilted in a chair, grieved and isolated
in a room behind a locked and guarded door. As an author and illustrator, he draws himself
sitting in a small birdcage, held by the government official, again, representing how he is not a
person in this moment, but an object for observation and one that is under consideration. As the
government official watches Neyestani—both in the locked room and inside the birdcage—it is
clear that Neyestani is capable of only waiting for the government to render a decision about and
for him. The official is in a position to judge and make a decision about the fate of another
person; but until that decision is necessary or until that official is convinced that Neyestani is
deserving of release, Neyestani will remain as an object for consideration. Image 7 reflects the

69
moment when Neyestani’s fake passport is believed to be credible by a border patrol agent,
effectively “stamping” Neyestani with approval, and permission to enter the country (Appendix
E, Image 7). The illustration of the passport stamp is suggested to have come down with force,
much like a gavel, with directional gesture lines hovering just above the physical hand, and the
side text of “BANG!” in somewhat ill-aligned full capital letter text (Appendix E, Image 7).
Much of the story consists of frames that are stylistically similar to those depicted in
Image 8, Image 9, and Image 10: blacked-out background spaces, striking in their emptiness, but
equally overwhelming in the space that the ink takes up on the page (Appendix E, Images 8, 9,
and 10). Were the frames empty and white, hollowed, they would not communicate such a
daunting or oppressive energy. As a prisoner locked within an unfamiliar space and under the
unrelenting command orders of guards and government officials, the blackhole-like frames
communicate that Neyestani is in something of an abyss. The blindfold that created some of this
metaphoric darkness limited his knowing anything in full, as he could not see, and even in the
circumstances where he could see and observe his own circumstance, much of the information he
could access was encrypted in that he could not know or understand it. Symbolically, the
blindfold further expresses how Neyestani became quite literally dependent on small movements,
reaching out to lean on the shoulders of fellow prisoners, so that they could guide one another
down a hallway of darkness—toward an unknowable future (Appendix E, Images 8, 9, and 10).
The peek down to the floor shows the little part of the world that Neyestani could in fact see: his
own feet (Appendix E, Image 10). Under arrest, he was only capable of proceeding with caution,
looking out for himself even when he could not see, taking one step at a time.
Neyestani’s graphic novel communicates the complexities of the give and take structure
of offering a testimonial account. Reporting and relaying the information that he was privy to, or

70
in attempt to explain his own circumstance, the receiver of the information is not necessarily
bound to accept that information (Appendix E, Image 11). Making the statement and swearing
to its truth does not register as being convincing enough for the observing prison guard—the
judging authority that effectively determines the credibility and legitimacy of Neyestani’s claims
(Appendix E, Image 11). Though he does indeed have an audience to speak to, as a witness,
Neyestani still is a subject under the control of the audience who may or may not hear, listen to,
or confer with what it is that he expresses.
Further, from the position of a speaker, though supplying something to an audience, it
can be the case that that supply does not meet the audience’s hypothetical demand. While he
was speaking in truth, and swearing to the accuracy of his account, it was of little interest to the
guard (Appendix E, Image 11). In Image 12, the reader can see this same idea apply, though in a
slightly different context: while on his knees, Neyestani attempts to offer comfort and support to
a fellow prisoner (Appendix E, Image 12). From both his utterances and his physical stature, the
reader can observe that Neyestani’s ability to offer, lend, and give to the receiver is not entirely
within his control (Appendix E, Image 12). The sequence of images is reminiscent of a polaroid
photograph, and within the span of four frames, that same polaroid does not change in its visual
content, but proceeds to shrink in size (Appendix E, Image 12). His memory of this moment is
preserved, but its value diminishes over time if that memory cannot be received or accounted for
by someone outside of himself (Appendix E, Image 12).
As a prisoner, and now, as a speaker giving testimony, Neyestani needed and needs help.
He struggled in prison, and now, as he recalls the experience and shares it with an audience, he
continues to struggle. With artistic exaggeration, in Images 13 and 14, Neyestani looks on and
out to the reader, simulating a point of looking to make eye contact, desperate for attention and

71
acknowledgement that he is in danger (Appendix E, Images 13 and 14). His eyes are stretched
wide but reveal pinned pupils, indicating that while he is eagerly searching for help, he is
paralytically fixed to feelings of fear and anxiety (Appendix E, Images 13 and 14). Tied to a
train track with a train engine seen on the horizon that is headed toward his body, though his
hands are restricted, even Neyestani continues to reach out as best as he can, in both directions,
with a strained head and strained feet (Appendix E, Image 13). His body is rigid and bound
under the rope; he cannot move (Appendix E, Image 13). As an artist, Neyestani intentionally
illustrated his own character to be in a position where he is in oriented to look at the world from
a near upside down perspective: on his back with nowhere to turn, and struggling with the
anticipation of a painful death, the only place he can look is up, the only hope he has is that
someone (be it a justice figure in his life at the time, or, perhaps, the reading audience that later
becomes witness to his experience) will notice him and help him escape (Appendix E, Image
13). The visual in Image 14 shows a spillage making its way past the metal barricade, the prison
guard, and in a way that defies the laws of the physical universe by sliding up a set of stairs, the
spillage begins to slowly fill Neyestani’s prison cell (Appendix E, Image 14). The fifth frame of
the sequence shows that Neyestani is half submerged, and as the spillage (representative of either
the blood shed from the violent political riots, or of the black ink that drew the cockroach to
begin with) continues to flow into his cell, Neyestani is at risk of “drowning” in the matter of his
circumstances (Appendix E, Image 14). He stretches out his hand, desperate for anything or
anyone to grab a hold of to help him survive (Appendix E, Image 14).
Finally, Neyestani exhibits that throughout his time in captivity and even in the aftermath
of release from prison, he was repeatedly reduced to being lesser or alternative versions of
himself. The images show his body getting smaller and frail over time. In two specific

72
instances, Neyestani illustrates portraits of himself, once after being registered to a numerical
identity, and then a second time after being issued false passport documents so that he could flee
the country (Appendix E, Images 15 and 16). In another instance, the government gave
Neyestani an alias to live under as a protective measure. Standing humbly and squarely in both
images, Neyestani is seen frowning, with delicately raised eyebrows—he is a person that any
observer would pity (Appendix E, Images 15 and 16). He holds what now qualify as name
placards, saddened by the fact that he is now not even associated with his own name (Appendix
E, Images 15 and 16). He is not Mana Neyestani, he is a prisoner. He is someone else looking
to leave Iran. He is arguably interchangeable, made to feel insignificant.

Research Question Two (RQ2)
Reading An Iranian Metamorphosis, the reader is informed of Mana Neyestani’s
experience of undue arrest, detention, and political persecution by a then-corrupt Iranian
government. Studying the visual illustrations, the reader interprets that experience as being
historical and truthful: Neyestani’s artistic style and tone is intentionally evidentiary. The
progression of visual frames is consistent in its measurement, spacing, alignment, and grid-like
structure. There are only a few occasions when the illustration frame interrupts the general linear
flow, and usually, that was to communicate something particularly important, or dramatic with
respect to shifting the direction of the story. The square frames are made to look like polaroid
photographs; they are small and contain what equates to a summary of a much greater landscape,
yet, they reveal the necessary information just the same. Further, like a polaroid, the frames are
timely and somewhat urgent in that they develop quickly, and they only need exposure to light
and a seeing eye to reveal a true moment in time.

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Neyestani committed the graphics to pure black and white illustration, making the
content appear to be factual, evidentiary, permanent, and with little room for interpretation. The
story in the graphic novel is as just as it was lived. Transcribing the lived experience and now
memory to the graphic novel is a means to preserve, maintain, and communicate the experience
to external audiences. While it does not still have a life that fill the pages with color, the black
and white imagery indicates that the memory of the experience very much lives on, and it is a
memory that is stark for Neyestani, potentially even haunting. The illustrations themselves are
harsh and direct, especially when viewed in comparison to his professional cartoon works and
the referential sketch of his original children’s comic cockroach. The images are filled with
blunt lines and sharp edges; rather than using shading techniques to represent light, Neyestani
creates various gridworks that affectively texture rather than darken the spaces. This texture
suggests that there is layering, depth, interconnectedness, and a structural fabric to the memory.
It was not created on accident. As an observer, the reader watches Neyestani walk down
blacked-out corridors that he himself could not see while under a blindfold. The reader can
know more about Neyestani’s memory of the experience by assessing the gesture, facial
expressions, body language, and tones of the characters.
The testimony is not taken less seriously simply because Neyestani allows himself some
space as an artist to create visual metaphor by simulating a death-by-drowning event. Though
those moments of expression are not scientific or exact in reference to what happened, the reader
can imagine and understand exactly what it is that Neyestani intends to communicate about the
growing weight, burden, fear, and guilt that he felt while being held prisoner and knowing that
people were dying as a result of political riots.

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The reader is truly made aware of his role in bearing witness to the testimony when
Neyestani makes contact with the reader. On several occasions, he makes a point to not simply
illustrate characters’ eyes, but takes care to put them in the reader’s direct line of sight, to
simulate that the two are making eye contact with one another. They are engaged with one
another, and now, they know one another. The reading audience has seen, and the witness-
speaker has been seen. Neyestani also takes advantage of breaking the fourth wall: his illustrated
character writes and draws outside of the rationed paper space he was granted, he reaches outside
of the frame with his hand to seek help, and on the day that the government granted him
(temporary) release from prison, Neyestani’s character flies with bird wings up toward the
ceiling to quite literally break the barrier of the space he was confined in for so long (Appendix
E, Images 14 and 17). Breaking this fourth wall reminds the reader that this testimony is what
breaks the speaker’s own internal fourth wall—the story has only yet existed in his own
experience, and in his own memory, but by sharing it to a public outside of himself, he can
relieve himself of some of the trauma burden that the memory has imposed. The speaker has
made contact with the audience; now, it falls upon the audience to respond to the asks of the
speaker.

II. Snotgirl
Summary and Context
Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung’s 2016 graphic novel series, Snotgirl, follows
Lottie Person, a social celebrity and fashion blogger, whose very identity is motivated by, shaped
for, and presented as being perfect: Lottie Person lives a happy, glamorous, and good life
(O’Malley et al., 2017; O’Malley et al., 2018). However, outside of the public domain that she

75
advertises herself to, Lottie Person lives a truer, less perfect life. Lottie struggles with health
problems, internalizes loneliness, and depletes her own energy by competing with herself and
others for attention, beauty, fame, and to live the life that others can only dare to dream of
10

(O’Malley, et al., 2017; O’Malley, et al., 2018). The narrative ultimately depicts Lottie’s life in
full while simultaneously revealing the sub-plot that is Lottie’s selectively advertised life
(O’Malley, 2017; O’Malley, 2018).

Research Question One (RQ1)
The results of the content analysis descriptive statistics show that the most frequent
emotion and tone throughout the novel was happiness (42.17%) (Appendix C). As a media
celebrity whose primary commitment is to fashion blogging and social activity, Lottie was
overwhelmingly free of authoritative presence (77.71%) (Appendix C). The main character was
usually in the company of other people (59.37% of the time); further, when in the company of
other people, the main character was typically amongst friends (56.67% of time) (Appendix C).
By her own account, Lottie’s “…blog is amazing...take [her] word for it” (O’Malley et
al., 2017; Appendix F, Image 2). Her “life is pretty much perfect,” and she’s living to “chase the
dream” (O’Malley et al., 2017; Appendix F, Image 3). From the onset, Lottie Person declares
her own authority: she is an expert to her own experience, and by awarding herself with
credibility, believes that from her own position of observing the lives of others around her, her

10
It is important to note that while the Snotgirl series is a work of fiction, it is a work of realistic
fiction, and very easily and clearly translates to any number of celebrity influencers or persons of
popular media presence and importance. This work was chosen for analysis as a representation
of stylistic testimony and epidictic rhetoric because the figure is one of social authority, who
speaks to mass publics in present moments, and whose objective is to promote or discourage
behaviors, lifestyles, and what is deemed to be of value.

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life is superior. Her claim is that her life is one that is worthy of living, and it is one that others
should aspire to live. At the same time, her comment acknowledges that her life is pretty much
perfect; there is still an imagined ideal of perfection that she herself has not yet accomplished.
She positions herself as being at a distance from her social cohort and people who subscribe to
her celebrity status, because that will allot her with a competitive edge that ranks her as being
superior. Even if she has perfection to chase that remains in mind but just out of reach, her own
self-promotion is reassurance that her life is better than others’ lives, and that she can shower in
pleasures that other people can only relate to through her display.
In each of her posts or publications, Lottie presents herself to the public as being a living
spectacle; her life is tailored to meeting the value sets that measure a life as being well-lived.
She is careful to inform people only of what she wants them to know, a very edited version of the
narrative that she believes is worthy of being known (Appendix F, Image 3). When she is on
physical display, Lottie continues to curate a lifestyle that she wants people to know about—one
that is contrary to the one she lives behind closed doors. The graphic novel shows that in the
public eye, Lottie portrays her life as being akin to an event that knows no curfew: she dresses in
extravagant outfits and costumes, performing a role and becoming an icon of perfection that
others can take in and imagine themselves as being (Appendix F, Images 4 and 6). She shares
with her followers that she simply “woke up like [that],” and that her life is “exactly how [life] is
supposed to be” (Appendix F, Image 7).
However, once she is alone in her bedroom and illuminated only by the light of her
computer screen, Lottie sits on her bed, curled inward toward herself wearing tattered sweatpants
(Appendix F, Image 3). The power cord of her laptop is like an intravenous bag that sustains her
virtual identity; she transmits information that is pleasing to her, that suits her own needs and

77
desires, but is under no obligation to receive direct input from others. Lottie lives for pleasure
and invites others to seek pleasure. She unapologetically declares that the only way to get what
one wants out of life is to “seize the damn moment” (Appendix F, Image 6).
Again, though, Lottie’s outward character as a celebrity that shines in the light of all that
is good and valued in the world knows a darker shadow. Holding her image in his own hand,
some unknown character—a witnessing audience—believes Lottie to be a rosy-cheeked, smiley,
playful and joyful personality (Appendix F, Image 5). Grasping the image tightly within his
palm, the illustration communicates that given the character’s attention to the screen and
desperate grab at the image, Lottie (or what her life represents) is something that is desired
(Appendix F, Image 5). The space behind the character’s hand is blacked out, because Lottie is
the spectacle, and what she represents is what is worthy of being paid attention to. In that
present moment in time, nothing else is of significance and does not warrant distraction
(Appendix F, Image 5).
In moments separate from the lifestyle she promotes through media, as a speaker, Lottie
reveals something to the reading audience that is kept private from her typical audience of
followers. Lottie cries often; she struggles with health issues; she hides her snot-covered face
behind her own hand, and her eyes express that she is embarrassed (Appendix F, Image 9). She
is vulnerable to reality and protects herself from being seen in unfavorable circumstances
because to blemish her own image would be to threaten her personal brand, ultimately
diminishing her status of being an icon for others to desire. Though this idea is expressed
through the visuals, Lottie’s admission in the small text frames that accompany the images
clarify that she will not allow people to “see [her that] way,” especially when “no one ever has”
(Appendix F, Image 9). The broken, lesser, messier, upset, lonely, isolated Lottie “doesn’t

78
exist,” because to acknowledge that version of herself would be a woeful contradiction to the
person, the life, the ideals, the privilege, and the perfection that she so highly praises herself for
having (Appendix F, Images 9 and 12).

Research Question Two (RQ2)
The illustrations, coloring, layout, and format are bold. The colors favor neons and
brightness that dramatically draw attention. Lottie herself has green hair. The illustrations do
not follow any specific spatial or framing format. The narrative develops in a sequence that is
more similar to advertisements in magazines. Paying no mind to the discipline of margins, the
images take up as much space as the pages themselves will allow—to fail to use the space would
be to waste space and would be to lose out on an opportunity to ‘show’ the audience something.
The inconsistency is somewhat distracting because the witnessing audience can easily become
overwhelmed in the spectacle images given the plethora of different elements that are each trying
to capture and maintain attention. The witnessing audience, as a reader, looks to not only follow
the content, but also to find something relatable and in-common with the speaker’s story.
Ultimately, as a witness to a testimony that praises and promotes, the audience is free to engage
with, consume, and find pleasure in whatever is of interest to that audience member.
Further, in following a magazine-like model of media presentation, the content itself is
light and simple to follow. As is artistic and playful, the visuals do not convey that the content is
laden with information that requires much careful attention or memorization. Its objective is to
share information with the audience that can be consumed on a surface level and that is easily
understandable by a broader audience. The visuals impress ideas upon the reader, and leave
space for comparison and reflection, but they do not necessarily require response.

79
This promotional narrative aims to show, not necessarily to tell. The visuals take
precedent over the text, and the audience is meant to know the story as they see it brought to
their visual landscape. The visuals and the text are deliberate, and they command presence based
on the speaker who puts them on display. From the perspective of one of Lottie’s followers, her
narrative is effective, because the audience is made aware, and directs attention to what it is that
she shares. In a real-time, present, and easily fleeting moment, the public audience can imagine,
understand, relate to, and measure what it is that Lottie suggests as being worthy of praise or
high acknowledgement. From her public display, Lottie Person successfully accounts for what it
is to thrive.

III. Paper Girls
Summary and Context
Spanning six volumes published between 2016 and 2019, Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff
Chiang’s Paper Girls is a story about four 12-year-old girls who meet and become fast friends as
a result of being on the same early morning paper route the day after Halloween (Vaughan et al.,
2016a; Vaughan et al., 2016b; Vaughan et al., 2017; Vaughan et al., 2018a; Vaughan et al.,
2018b; Vaughan et al., 2019). Born just before the true brink of the hopepunk movement, Paper
Girls finds Erin, MacKenzie (“Mac”), KJ, and Tiffany in a rather apocalyptic circumstance—the
world has all but disappeared before their eyes, adults (and most people) are missing from their
lives, and their hometown has been invaded by both teenagers from the future as well as a group
of people who are only ever referred to as the “Old-Timers” (Vaughan et al., 2016a; Vaughan et
al., 2016b; Vaughan et al., 2017; Vaughan et al., 2018a; Vaughan et al., 2018b; Vaughan et al.,
2019).

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Despite their misfortune of being caught in the middle of an age-war, the paper girls take
on the duty of resolving a conflict that is not their own but that they believe they can contribute
to resolving (Vaughan et al., 2016a; Vaughan et al., 2016b; Vaughan et al., 2017; Vaughan et al.,
2018a; Vaughan et al., 2018b; Vaughan et al., 2019). Throughout the series, their spectrum of
experiences expands exponentially—transportation starts with pedaling a bicycle and ends with
piloting a time machine; keeping in contact via walkie-talkie is made a thing for the archives
once telepathy comes into play; taking to the duty to deliver the news is made nearly
insignificant to the new venture to deliver order to the world; and the discipline that came from a
riding through the neighborhood on a daily five o’clock A.M. paper route is repurposed to the
commitment to pedal forward through uncertainty, taking care of people along the way (Vaughan
et al., 2016a; Vaughan et al., 2016b; Vaughan et al., 2017; Vaughan et al., 2018a; Vaughan et al.,
2018b; Vaughan et al., 2019).

Research Question One (RQ1)
The results of the content analysis descriptive statistics indicate that the emotional and
tonal expression present most often in Paper Girls was hopeful (26.83%) (Appendix D). The
four primary characters were rarely in the presence of an authority figure (74.39% of the time,
they were free of any dominating figure) (Appendix D). Throughout the series, the characters
were noticeably in the company of friends half of the time (49.29%) (Appendix D).
The analysis of the descriptive content within the novel begins the morning after
Halloween when Erin, Mac, KJ, and Tiffany found the world barren and abandoned while on
their morning paper route. Rather than fleeing to the safety of their homes, the girls continued to
deliver the news to front doors that likely would remain shut. Wondering what could have

81
caused such an all-encompassing hollowing-out of their community, the girls looked to the
cosmos (Appendix G, Images 1 through 3). The spectacular new wave of color, brightness,
direction, and majesty was equally unfamiliar to them—the girls acknowledge that they have
never seen anything like it (Appendix G, Image 2). The girls’ reactions are in kind: their mouths
fall open, signifying pleasant shock and disbelief in the possibility of something so beautiful;
both Mac’s and Tiffany’s eyes are glistening and bright with light as their minds feast on
something that had only ever been possible in the creative spaces of imagination (Appendix G,
Images 1 through 3). KJ acknowledges that “everything looks brighter up there when it is pitch
black down here,” showing the possibility of perspective and alternative to the oppressive nature
of the current status of the neighborhood (Appendix G, Image 2). Each of the girls is seen facing
in what could represent the four directional dimensions of north, east, south, and west—there is
no true North or proper route to understanding what it is that they are experiencing, it is enough
to be present and observe and take pause to allow themselves to believe in the beauty of what
they are seeing (Appendix G, Image 2). They can pursue answers to the reality or meaning of it
at another point in time. The sky is offering the girls an invitation to explore and is directing
them toward something that may be a solution to the darkness that fell over Cleveland. The girls
are appreciative of the moment; they are taken aback, and as their shoulders fall, their heads lift
with hope, wonder, and admiration, making their duty to deliver the newspaper be forgotten
entirely.
Throughout the series, the girls take on rebel and warrior-like identities. They hold
commanding presence with squinted eyes, tightened brow lines, and upright posture (Appendix
G, Images 4 and 5). They are affectively predatory, focused, and anticipatory to what lies just
ahead of them (Appendix G, Images 4 and 5). Mac wears military combat boots and a recycled

82
bomber jacket. Erin sports a tattered and oversized denim jacket that has known rough work in
its life as an item of clothing. The illustration in Image 4 shows Mac reaching to her lower hip to
retrieve a newspaper from her tote (Appendix G, Image 4). While blowing cigarette smoke to
the wind in punkish defiance of social rules, Mac makes herself a soldier, angularly directing her
arm across her body to effectively draw a newspaper out, forward, and away from its resting
position, much like the motion of pulling a gun from a holster or a sword from a belt (Appendix
G, Image 4).
The girls approach their dangers without violence; their squadron was founded on
something powerful in its information, but soft in its tangibility: newspaper. Yet, they are
equipped and secure in their own toughness. They can feel protected from danger with the
simple and pure resource of having one another—having friends—at their sides. Whether
standing in the woods, on the shores of beaches from prior millennia, on the desert grounds of a
planet that will not be discovered until some later point in the future, or simply straddled across
their bikes, they mobilize as a pack and with a social pact to do what they can to do well by the
world (Appendix G, Image 5). While each of the girls finds some object to use as a tool (for
Mac, a walkie talkie, for KJ, a field hockey stick, for Tiffany, a small flashlight, and for Erin, her
satchel of rolled newspapers), their true arsenal of ammunition comes from their spirit and their
commitment to wanting to know.
Even the smallest action of shining a singular flashlight down the dimly lit road
contributes to helping the other see and improves the quality of the moment from what it was in
the absence of that small flash of light (Appendix G, Image 5). Having initially seen the sky
erupt in pink color, the girls were exposed to something that they could believe in, and they
make it their mission to move themselves and other people forward with the hope that they can

83
know that brightness and that beauty full well, comfortable with leaving the darkness behind
them.
Engaged in a mental, emotional, and physical battle with the world, the paper girls are
present, active, and agents to their own experience. They do not succumb to being dependent on
being told what to do, how to understand, or which way to proceed. They are consistent in being
in motion and moving onward to the next thing, always contributing something to progress
(Appendix G, Images 7 and 8). Image 6 depicts the fierce energy behind their collective
ambition: the illustration depicts speed, intention, direction, and tenacity (Appendix G, Image 6).
The wheels have traction against the pavement, just as the image shows KJ’s foot having traction
against the pedal, and while they are in contact with the ground beneath them, they refuse to be
bound to that specific time or space (Appendix G, Image 6). Pedaling the bike—especially with
speed—requires effort and work, but the push and pull effects their progress and guides them
equally forward with hope, toward something alternative, and away from what was bad.
The girls also reflect having integrity and diligence as their actions are neither
extrinsically motivated, nor are they manifested for purely self-serving interest. Their quest is
one that seeks understanding and hopes for resolve but does not accommodate to abandoning the
duty and responsibility that came from their daily lives prior to ‘doomsday.’ Erin continues to
deliver the news to front doors that, in all likelihood, will not be opened (Appendix G, Image 7).
As if hurling a grenade (perhaps because the news for the day is that the horizon is rather bleak),
Erin launches rolled newspapers toward doorsteps, and in sync with the paper’s trajectory away
from Erin and back toward the ground, the frames reduce in size and height (Appendix G, Image
7). Though she takes pause to look back behind her, Erin’s action is one of progress and that

84
moves forward. Again, information in the newspaper is a form of ammunition, and whether the
information content carries good or bad spirits with it is for the recipient to determine.
As twelve-year-old girls, Erin, Mac, KJ, and Tiffany do not yet know the harsh realities
of the world. However, finding themselves now very much alone in it, they quickly become
ambassadors to kindness and selfless action. It is their duty to take care of themselves, and
others, however they can and by whatever means they know how. Waking up in the morning,
Erin immediately checks in on her sister, hovering down from a top bunkbed, signifying her
position as an elder, a caretaker, a protector, and a loving guardian (Appendix G, Image 9).
Later in the series, Erin is wounded by a gunshot, and the friends collapse to the floor around her
forming a protective nest-like circular shield to protect her from any further external harm
(Appendix G, Image 10). This speaks to their sense of tribal and warrior-like allegiance to one
another. The text articulates that they are completely unaware of how to tend to Erin’s actual
wound, but that they also reject the notion of being despondent. Mac grasps Erin’s hand to offer
comfort and support, and naively insists that her knowledge of first aide will heal Erin (Appendix
G, Image 10). The coloring of these frames also indicates that there is a greater need to “take
care” and proceed with caution in these moments, given their darker, blue, gray, and opaque
coloring (Appendix G, Images 10 through 12).
Finally, the girls are persistent, and they are volunteers to their own experiences. Their
journey is not about measuring success or failure but is about being participant. They will not
accept personal defeat, “no” is never the correct or final answer, and truth can only come from
being able to know for themselves (Appendix G, Images 12 and 13). KJ reclaims power by
picking her bike up from off of the ground; Mac takes command by tightly clutching her walkie
talkie and clenching her teeth; and, Tiffany stares defiantly at whatever interference attempts to

85
stand in her way (Appendix G, Image 13). Though they migrate together, ultimately, each paper
girl is on a journey of her own, moving with hope, because they are motivated, and because they
can. The struggle that they find themselves enmeshed in is both an individual struggle and a
collective one, and whether others choose to commit to experiencing it, engage by working
through it, or act toward a resolution is entirely up to each individual (Appendix G, Image 14).
Through their endeavor, the girls do not ever act out of a need to be a hero—they’re
twelve. They know little about the world, and that is precisely the point. As little girls, their
exposure to the world was limited at best. To then find themselves in a place where they were
left to discover, heal, and potentially shape the future world without any help or guidance, their
greatest power and greatest weapon was to be curious and to explore. To live with imagination
in an age where experience transitions between fantasy and reality. That engagement helped
them to come to know the world for themselves, regardless of whatever they found along the
way. That entanglement—finding themselves active in the narrative as it was unfolding—kept
their pursuit authentic. As they were never expectant of accomplishing a happy ending, they had
no bias to impart on the outcome. They simply lived it to be able to know it.

Research Question Two (RQ2)
As a witness to their experience of discovering, the reader is able to imagine and form a
foundation for believing in the aesthetic idea. Paper Girls is a work of fantasy fiction. It is an
unknowable experience, because it is not based in a setting of a known reality. That is not to
suggest, though, that the concepts or ideas are unknowable. Reading the text and paying visual
attention makes the audience active to the testimony, because the aesthetic idea has planted an
idea and frame of reference. It is not sufficient to observe or accept the information as being

86
true, because it speaks to something that exists in a realm of imagination. The reader must
interpret and form his or her own knowledge around the aesthetic idea by carrying forth the idea
and applying the hopepunk ideology into his or her own individual practice.
Simply believing the aesthetic testimony and accepting the idea as it was presented did
not conclude the experience or definitively answer what it is for something to be hopepunk;
instead, the aesthetic testimony ignited the possibility for the audience to come to know
hopepunk by moving forward with it, and acting with the same spirit and intention that resonated
within the frames of the novel. There is a certain call to action for the audience to join the team
and be a paper girl. If a twelve-year-old can take on the world in its darkest moment and work
toward knowing it in a fuller, more complete, and more beautiful dimension, why can’t (or
shouldn’t) we, as witnesses to their experience, and as agents of our own?
Because of its quality of being a fantasy, the aesthetic testimony serviced the audience
with a skeletal framework for something that could be; it did not promise a truth or an outcome
by telling a story of a relatable reality, but instead mobilized the potential for applying the
framework to lived experience. Through vibrant illustration and compacted text, Paper Girls
communicated quite simply what would have otherwise been a compound and complicated idea.
Metaphorically speaking, the audience was shown how to ride a bike, and how the subtlest of
motions can accomplish something significant. Having formulated a base idea of how the
machine ought to work by pushing one foot in front of the other, the audience now has an
opportunity to seek to pedal for themselves, on his or her own bicycle, and come to know full
well what it is to engage in the experience of riding regardless of the journey’s trajectory. The
paper girls’ testimony in the graphic novel introduced a new idea, and given its infancy, the

87
reader is encouraged to take time to become acquainted with the idea, what it represents, and to
seek the application of that idea in the world.

Research Question Three (RQ3)
The third research question looked to assess how it might be possible to quantify the
social utility of aesthetic testimony so that aesthetic testimony can serve as a mechanism to
achieve hope, love, the good, and the beautiful. This question can be answered using text mining
data analysis to evaluate the relationship between aesthetic testimony and the audience’s
affective response.
To visually represent the words found within the corpus comprehensively used in
association to hopepunk, I used a tool within the data analysis software Orange3 to generate a
word cloud. The word cloud depicts which words were found to be most in common with or
used in the highest probability of association to hopepunk. Beginning in the center of the word
cloud, the size and clustering of the words depict the significance of the word in its relationship
to hopepunk. For example, the words “new,” “us,” “act,” “art,” “like,” “bad ass good guys,”
“wir
11
,” and “hopefulness” are dominant. Examining the periphery of the word cloud, words
such as “zukunftsvisionen
12
,” “klären,” “world,” “working,” “better,” and “authentic” can be
found. The audience’s introduction to, familiarity with, and entanglement into hopepunk has
affected their public responses to it as an aesthetic idea. The text content that was produced and
mined shows the ideas, emotions, and themes that are generated from hopepunk, and are
consistent with the hopepunk concept of working through, taking care, being kind, and pushing

11
“Wir” is a German word which translates to “we” in English.
12
“Zukunftsvisionen” is a German word or phrase which translates to “future visions” in
English.

88
back against the obstacle of the present for the sake of pushing to progress. The word cloud
infographic can be reviewed in Appendix H.
The Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling application calculated a probability
distribution reflecting how often words within the data corpus were used with respect to the
search topic locus: #hopepunk. The topic models reflect which words are in trend with one
another when used in relation to “#hopepunk” on Twitter. Having analyzed the words within the
data corpus, the text mining software inferred that the most prominent themes relating to
hopepunk were Topic 9 and Topic 5, respectively. The topics and themes contained within
Topics 9 and 5 are as follows:
Topic 9: hopepunk, larp, dystopie, challenge, authentic, child’s story,
badassgoodguys, fur, search.
Topic 5: best, working, solutions, seek, purposeful, find, earth, discovering,
citizens, ye.
From seven of the nine words generated within Topic 9, Alexandra Rowland’s concept for
hopepunk is nearly expressed in full. Hopepunk is put in relation to the concept of dystopia; of
course, how one would interpret that relationship may require either preexisting knowledge of
hopepunk being a response to dystopia and grimdark cultural themes or further inquiry into that
relationship. Topic 9 indicates that hopepunk involves challenge, or is itself a challenge.
Hopepunk is authentic; genuine in its raw approach to intrinsically seeking hope, love, kindness,
the good, and to promote collective well-being. Prior research informed that Rowland’s
conception of hopepunk came from ideas of fantasy and aspiring for a brighter, more hopeful
future, so it is not surprising that ‘child’s story’ is included in the topic model. Paying proper
mind to the ‘punk’ qualities of the hopepunk aesthetic, the topic model included

89
‘badassgoodguys,’ reflecting that the conversations around hopepunk on twitter acknowledge the
rebellious, edgy, and imperfect hero characters who participate in hopepunk. Finally, and
perhaps most significantly within this topic model, we see that the word ‘search’ is included,
capturing the true theme of hopepunk: it is a movement, it is made up of challenges, it is
something that the ‘badassgoodguys’ engage with so that they may invest in, contribute to, and
advance belief into a knowable reality.
Looking to Topic 5, we see that its topic model could effectively summarize the
hopepunk aesthetic by joining the majority of its constituent words into one sentence: hopepunk
is a movement and a way of being led by citizens, for citizens of greater earth, who are motivated
to find and discover the best solutions to current problems by working purposefully to seek the
best for the greatest number of people. Exposure to hopepunk and engaging with hopepunk,
people are carrying the ideas of the movement forward by generating conversation about it, what
it represents, and they are looking to become involved with one another in discussions about it.
The topic model reinforces that the conversations on the Twitter social media platform are shared
with, amongst, and between people who have ideas and experiences in common, and are either
looking to share those experiences with others who are familiar, or, may be looking to introduce
those experiences to those who remain unknowing.
A chi-square test was used to determine the sentiment affiliation with the use of
“#hopepunk” on Twitter. The four most prominent emotions and/or tones associated with
“#hopepunk” were, in order of significance: joy; surprise; sadness; and, fear. This sentiment
analysis was statistically significant, X
2
= 117.00, p < 0.000. The joy, happiness, and pleasure
along with the surprise and sense of wonder fulfillment that comes from getting to know and
becoming entangled within the hopepunk aesthetic idea overwhelms the feelings of sadness or

90
fear that are still present in the discussion. This report is accurate to the concept and lived
experience of hopepunk, given hopepunk’s origin as a rebellious response to the ‘grimdark’ and
apocalyptic themes of contemporary reality. Hopepunk does not dispel the negative or
unfortunate circumstances that are present within one’s lived experience; instead, it prompts
individuals to respond to those darknesses differently. By investing in the idea, seeking it out,
and being intrinsically motivated to know hopepunk for the sake of knowing it affects
(potentially momentary but still measurable) joy, pleasure, and happiness to those whom engage
in it. The same is true with respect to feeling sadness or fear while coming to know hopepunk,
which is in likeness to the hoepunk aesthetic. Despite its being presented in forms of fantasy, it
is not meant to be a story of perfections or purities.
For a more comprehensive review of the text mining data, the full topic modeling,
sentiment analysis reports, and their corresponding visuals can be reviewed in Appendix I and
Appendix J, respectively.

Additional Findings of Note
With respect to the content analysis sample, the corpus was limited to three graphic novel
series. The graphic novels were selected to be representative of the three forms of testimony
under examination: moral, from the perspective of a survivor; stylistic, from the perspective of
one who is thriving; and, aesthetic, to represent the presentation of the truth of an idea that an
audience may believe in but may only be able to know by engaging in the experience and
coming to know for himself. Additional content for the moral, stylistic, and aesthetic testimony
sub-category analyses may strengthen the overall results of the content analysis. Though the
selected graphic novels were fitting to represent the roles of the speaker and audience with

91
respect to offering testimony, to reduce the analysis of moral, stylistic, and aesthetic testimony to
three specific works would suggest that there is not room for further study or consideration of the
topic.
Additionally, conducting content analysis of graphic novel illustrations does leave more
room for interpretation than can be the case when analyzing textual content. Intercoder
reliability was intended to account for reducing bias of singular personal interpretation of the
image representation, or for one person’s specific relatability to the art. However tailored or
refined the variable codes may be, the variable codes are not necessarily exhaustive or fully
comprehensive, given the personal and interpretive nature of consuming and analyzing art.
The introductory exploration and evaluation of the hopepunk aesthetic movement was
also limited in the sense that it is still young and unfamiliar to many people. Having only been
truly ‘on market’ for the last two years, it still has much room to catch attention and generate
wider response than may currently exist.
The text mining operation was produced from a limited data corpus as a result of the
constrained access to the Twitter social media platform and the software analysis software used.
The sample from Twitter could only account for tweets issued by public accounts, and, the
analysis software implements a further filtration mechanism of collecting data from the publicly
tweeted content within 24-hour spans of time. It would also be of benefit to consult or include
additional social media sources to measure a more comprehensive use of the “#hopepunk” locus,
or, to measure how different sources are subscribing to or implementing the hopepunk movement
for different purposes. Finally, text mining does not account for or differentiate words with
multiple definitions, or for how the words may have been used in context.

92
It was interesting to note and record the prolific international usage of “#hopepunk,” and
how it has made waves into global communities. This may open possibility to conduct further
and more refined study as to which cultures are adopting hopepunk aesthetics, for which
purposes, and perhaps, can offer more detailed insight as to how sentiment correlation may be
dependent upon different cultural values.

93
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In reflecting on the history of narrative and the role that testimony has traditionally
played, culture has understood a witness’s testimony to be necessary with respect to its effect:
promising to offer a story of truth, a witness’ testimony statement in a judicial context can
resolve disputes of the past to reset boundaries and restore social justice; from an epidictic
context, testimony is culturally valuable because the speaker’s statement can garner attention
from an audience by praising social ideals and disparaging social disgraces. In both the judicial
and epidictic forms, the speaker and witness are able to find things in common by comparing and
relating personal experiences to a set of socially agreed upon rules, ideals, and aspirations.
Testimony is comfortable in its identity as and in its role of being a narrative that is
meant to be analyzed and critiqued for the sake of justice and moral virtues. Testimony is
comfortable in its identity as and in its role of being a narrative that can flourish for having a
halo effect over how things ought to be. Now, there is a greater opportunity for testimony to be
something other than a mechanism for convincing others based on assumedly known truths.
Testimony can achieve something with direction, but that does not require finality or specific
conclusion. By cultivating belief and encouraging that audiences build upon that belief by
getting to know more for themselves, by their own action, and on the merit of their own
experience, testimony can spur movement.
As an example of deliberative rhetoric, aesthetic testimony is capable of reducing bi-
partisan obligations for witnesses and audiences to be either for or against a subject matter. It
allows the audience to be something more than either/neither Epicurean or Stoic. The audience
can be both. Aesthetic testimony offers audiences something to imitate and enjoy; it is
something that they can believe in, hope for, and can come to know more about on their own

94
terms. Aesthetic testimony only requires that the audience participate in it, engage with it, and
become a part of its overall process. In having an audience being a part of its process, aesthetic
testimony is a culmination of voluntary investment into something unknown, and it is delightful
entanglement into one’s own experience of knowing the world. Without the individual and
collective exploration of the idea and without the greater will to know, aesthetic testimony could
not come to be.
By encouraging that people become involved in the greater social narrative to promote
collective well-being and the good life, culture can naturalize the value that has historically been
ascribed to what is or may be spoken about. People can evolve meaning so long as they become
interested in deliberating something alternative, and so long as they deliberate that alternative
together. That deliberation from multiple perspectives and points of experience may require that
the participants to aesthetic testimony deconstruct some knowledge so that they can ultimately
assess, rebuild, construct, and validate what they now know to be true. Engaging in aesthetic
testimony will dissolve objectivity from the deliberation, but that is the point of the matter.
Aesthetic testimony yields entanglement, and requires that emotion and personal attachment to
the experience be taken into consideration. Making decisions about love, kindness, taking care,
beauty, and the good ought not to be procured in a sterile environment; the decisions are personal
and will be personal, because the decision affects the person making the judgment as well as the
people the decision is made on behalf of.
Suiting the postmodern era and its communication needs for imagery and self-
applicability, aesthetic testimony is of the moment because it knows no obligation to preexisting
rules. Much like the “postmodern artist and writer who are working without rules,” people
intrigued by aesthetic testimony and people moved by hopepunk are in a position to “discover

95
what the rules governing their work will have been” (Belsey, 2002, p. 104). They cannot know
any singular outcome for the future, but that is not reason enough to neglect the hope or
possibility that a desired outcome may come to fruition someday. Aesthetic testimony empowers
both the speaker and the audience to create and to have some contribution to determining what is
knowable, so that it may be known more fully later, and may be explainable to people later on.
In a contemporary social stratosphere where people want to dually remain autonomous while still
identifying as a member of a larger cultural group, aesthetic testimony gives people a platform to
take ownership over something. Their respective roles become a multifaceted fusion of author,
co-author, editor, and audience. As the experience itself does not seek or know an ending, the
participants are never stagnant—they maintain interest because they are in the position to
determine what is of interest.
Finally, and unsurprisingly, aesthetic testimony brings color to a narrative genre that has
historically been made to exist in the black and white frames of fact. Traditionally speaking,
testimony has not yet allowed much room for the speaking witness to narrate a story of knowns
that can exist independent of prior lived experiences that can agreeably represent facts of the
matter, because they happened. When the narrative statement has been categorized or identified
as being a statement of testimony, that narrative has not allowed the possibility for aspects of
fiction to enter its domain. Moving with hopepunk, and moving with alternative mediums and
forms to transmit the knowledge that comes from witnessing an event, we can call upon aesthetic
testimony for inspiration to find ways to engage people in deliberation through their own
experiences. Culture can come to know what it is to expand the meaning of truth telling by
socially encouraging that people color within the lines of the concept of testimony. Prompting
engagement with and use of aesthetic testimony can meet the narrative communication needs of

96
the contemporary moment, and will reveal the stories that matter to people as they occur rather
than revealing them once they have already happened.

97
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Appendix A
Research Questions:
(RQ1) What does the testimony reveal about the identity image of the speaker as a witness?

(RQ2) As a witness to the speaker’s experience, what effect did reading, viewing, and
interpreting the testimony have on the reader? Was the speaker successful in his or her
role offering testimony?

Graphic Novel Frames
13
(Variable Name: Frame)

Latent Variable: Emotion of Character (Variable Name: Emotion)

Definition: Report the emotion represented or expressed by the character(s) in the
frame as depicted by facial expression, body language, or gesture.

1 = Sadness
2 = Fear
3 = Frustration
4 = Hope
5 = Happiness
6 = Strength

Keywords:
1 Sadness; helplessness; vulnerable; weakened; shame; suppressed;
oppressed; depressed; upset; crying; tears; frown; defeated;
deflated; numbness; endure; need; depend.

2 Fear; worry; tension; anxiety; nervous; concern; impatient; on-
edge; doubt; questioning; anguish.

3 Frustration; struggle; pain; anger; irritation; wince.

4 Hope; aspire; love; care; kind; anticipation; awaiting; depend on;
looking for; looking forward to; suggestive; encourage; motivate;
wonder; awe; future.

5 Happy; pride; joy; excite; smile; pleasure; enjoy; amuse; thrive;
prosper; flourish; progress.

13
Frames examined for consideration in the final coding procedure included only the frames that
included or were in direct association to a main character or figure in the narrative.

105
6 Strength; courage; toughness; brave; warrior; lead; fearless;
sacrifice; empowered; rebel; advocate; fighter; bold; hero.

Concrete Examples:
Sadness: A character is crying; a character’s body language is concaved
presents a hanging head.

Fear: A character is retreating; a character has raised eyebrows; a
character is sweating or shaking; a character is hiding or using
his/her body to protect or defend; a character’s eyes are pinned.

Frustration: A character has clenched fists; a character is throwing his/her head
back to scream; a character has a furrowed brow; a character holds
his/her own head to express outrage.

Hope: A character’s eyes are widened or seem to be mesmerized; a
character comforts or helps another; a character encourages
something.

Happy: A character is smiling; a character shows positive reaction.

Strength: A character forges ahead; a character combats an enemy or a
threat; a character triumphs through physical pain or discomfort; a
character challenges a difficulty.

Manifest Variable: Power or Authority (Variable Name: Authority)

Definition: The character is in the presence of another character that stands to
challenge or threaten the main character’s power or control over
him/herself. The opposing character may be an authority figure, a
superior, or someone who stands to suppress, control, or command the
main character to submission, compliance, or a lesser status.

Latent Variable: Company of People in the Frame (Variable Name: Company)

Definition: Number of primary characters or figures that appear within the frame, and
the company those people constitute: friends of the central figure; or,
persons the character would not consider to be a friend.

1 = Character is alone.
2 = Character is in company, with friends.
3 = Character is in company, with others or non-friends.

Concrete Examples:

106
1 The character or central figure is alone in the frame.

2 The character or central figure is not alone in the frame, and is in
the company of a friend or friends

3 The character or central figure is not alone in the frame, is in the
company of other people, but is not in the company of a friend.

Tiebreakers: In the event that the two coders disagree on a code input for a variable, the two
coders shall discuss their initial decisions for their respective input selection. The coders shall
consider the input selections that each coder had to offer, and the reasoning for selecting said
code input. The coders shall aim to achieve a common understanding and answer to the proper
code input selection after their discussion. Should an agreement still not be made, a third coder
will be asked to make an input selection to indicate whether the input shall be A or B.

107
Appendix B

The tables and charts below reflect the content analysis data and the descriptive statistics results
for each of the variables analyzed within An Iranian Metamorphosis.

The data results from analysis of a representative sample of frames contained within 50 random
pages (20%) of the novel.

Table 1: Emotion of Character Variable

Sadness Fear Frustration Hope Happy Strength
45 27 2 2 6 0

Table 2: Power or Authority Variable

Authority Figure No Authority Figure
40 42

Table 3: Company of People in the Frame Variable

Solo Company of Friends Company of Other
82 10 40

Descriptive Statistics Charts

Power or Authority

Mean 41
Standard Error 1
Median 41
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 1.41
Sample Variance 2
Range 2
Minimum 40
Maximum 42
Sum 82
Count 2

1.8841E+77

Emotion of Character

Mean 13.67
Standard Error 7.47
Median 4
Mode 2
Standard Deviation 18.31
Sample Variance 335.46
Range 45
Minimum 0
Maximum 45
Sum 82
Count 6

1.8841E+77

108

Company of People in Frame

Mean 44
Standard Error 20.88
Median 40
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 36.16
Sample Variance 1308
Range 72
Minimum 10
Maximum 82
Sum 132
Count 3

1.8841E+77

109
Appendix C

The tables and charts below reflect the content analysis data and the descriptive statistics results
for each of the variables analyzed within Snotgirl, Volume 1, and Snotgirl, Volume 2.

The data results from analysis of a representative sample of frames contained within 96 random
pages (20%) of the series.

Table 1: Emotion of Character Variable

Sadness Fear Frustration Hope Happy Strength
13 13 15 22 2 17

Table 2: Power or Authority Variable

Authority Figure No Authority Figure
37 129

Table 3: Company of People in the Frame Variable

Solo Company of Friends Company of Other
82 10 40

Descriptive Statistics Charts

Power or Authority

Mean 83
Standard Error 46
Median 83
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 65.05
Sample Variance 4232
Range 92
Minimum 37
Maximum 129
Sum 166
Count 2

1.8841E+77

Emotion of Character

Mean 27.67
Standard Error 11.09
Median 25.5
Mode 0
Standard Deviation 27.17
Sample Variance 738.66
Range 70
Minimum 0
Maximum 70
Sum 166
Count 6

1.8841E+77

110

Company of People in Frame

Mean 105
Standard Error 13.57
Median 106
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 23.51
Sample Variance 553
Range 47
Minimum 81
Maximum 128
Sum 315
Count 3

1.8841E+77

111
Appendix D

The tables and charts below reflect the content analysis data and the descriptive statistics results
for each of the variables analyzed within Paper Girls, Volume 1, Paper Girls, Volume 2, Paper
Girls, Volume 3, Paper Girls, Volume 4, Paper Girls, Volume 5, and Paper Girls, Volume 6.

The data results from analysis of a representative sample of frames contained within 140 random
pages (20%) of the series.

Table 1: Emotion of Character Variable

Sadness Fear Frustration Hope Happy Strength
13 13 15 22 2 17

Table 2: Power or Authority Variable

Authority Figure No Authority Figure
21 61

Table 3: Company of People in the Frame Variable

Solo Company of Friends Company of Other
59 69 12

Descriptive Statistics Charts

Emotion of Character

Mean 13.67
Standard Error 2.70
Median 14
Mode 13
Standard Deviation 6.62
Sample Variance 43.86
Range 20
Minimum 2
Maximum 22
Sum 82
Count 6

1.8841E+77

Power or Authority

Mean 41
Standard Error 20
Median 41
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 28.28
Sample Variance 800
Range 40
Minimum 21
Maximum 61
Sum 82
Count 2

1.8841E+77

112

Company of People in the Frame

Mean 46.67
Standard Error 17.57
Median 59
Mode #N/A
Standard Deviation 30.43
Sample Variance 926.33
Range 57
Minimum 12
Maximum 69
Sum 140
Count 3

1.8841E+77

113
Appendix E

The images below are 17 selected frames from Mana Neyestani’s An Iranian Metamorphosis
(Neyestani, 2014). The images are representative of the visual content analyzed within the
graphic novel. Some of these images are discussed in the content analysis report.

As they are categorized and separated by distinct pages in this appendix, the images are intended
to be representative of Neyestani’s experience as a submissive prisoner under authority (pages
106 and 107); an individual who speaks from memory (pages 108 and 109); an individual who is
not in control of his own situation, is in need of help, and is struggling to survive his own
circumstance (pages 110 and 111); and an individual whose own identity has been subjected to
variation as it has been stripped, reconstructed, and reshaped by people outside of himself (page
112).

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

114

Image 4
Image 5
Image 6
Image 7

115

Image 8
Image 9
Image 10

116

Image 11
Image 12

117

Image 13

118

Image 14

119

Image 15
Image 17
Image 16

120
Appendix F

The images below are 12 selected frames from Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung’s Snotgirl,
Volume 1: Green Hair, Don’t Care, and Snotgirl, Volume 2: California Screamin’ (O’Malley et
al., 2017; O’Malley et al., 2018). The images are representative of the visual content analyzed
within the graphic novels. Some of these images are discussed in the content analysis report.

As they are categorized and separated by distinct pages in this appendix, the images are intended
to be representative of Lottie Person’s experience as an individual whom operates for the
purpose of seeking self-pleasure: as a social celebrity, as a public spectacle, and as someone who
intends for others to follow her as a symbol of who other people should aspire to be (page 113);
an individual who self declares that she emanates qualities that are worthy of praise (pages 114);
and, an individual who declares certain qualities or ways of being that are undesirable or are
shameful (page 115).

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

121

Image 4
Image 5
Image 6 Image 7 Image 8

122

Image 9

Image 10 Image 11
Image 12

123
Appendix G

The images below are 14 selected frames from Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s six volume
graphic novel series, Paper Girls (Vaughan et al., 2016a; Vaughan et al., 2016b; Vaughan et al.,
2017; Vaughan et al., 2018a; Vaughan et al., 2018b; Vaughan et al., 2019). The images are
representative of the visual content analyzed within the graphic novels. Some of these images
are discussed in the content analysis report.

As they are categorized and separated by distinct pages in this appendix, the images are intended
to be representative of the paper girls’ experiences with hope, wonder, and aesthetic (page 116);
the girls as punk-like characters who are prepared for whatever may come their way, as warriors
ready to seek, protect, and defend an alternative outcome toward a better way of being (page
117); the girls in action—participant, engaged, and immersive in hopepunk, moving forward and
battalion-like as a squad, set in their intention to do the most good that they can (page 118); girls
interested in collective well-being, taking care, kindness, and self-sacrifice for the betterment of
others (page 119); and, finally, a group of young girls who will rebel against the cause, put up a
fight, and refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer (pages 120 and 121).

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

124

Image 4
Image 5

125

Image 6
Image 7
Image 8

126

Image 9
Image 11
Image 10

127

Image 12

128

Image 13
Image 14

129
Appendix H

The word cloud below depicts the words found within the corpus to be in most common and in
the highest probability with the usage of the locus word “#hopepunk.”

The corpus contained words from each of the following languages: Arabic, English, French;
German; Oodo; Romanian; and, Spanish.

130
Appendix I
The tables below depict each of the ten topic models generated from text mining the twitter data
corpus. The values calculated represent the probability that the words contained within each
topic model were used in relation to the initial locus topic word: hopepunk. The topic models
contained words from each of the following languages: Arabic, English, French; German; Oodo;
Romanian, and; Spanish.

Table 1 depicts the original ten topics, as generated by the algorithm, and the strength of each
topic in relation to the “#hopepunk” locus. The most prominent topics associated with
“#hopepunk” were Topics 9 and 5. Topics 6 and 4 were of interest, but did not represent as
being significant.

Table 2 identifies the words generated within each topic model.

Table 3 contains the same content as Table 2, but was translated into English for convenience of
review and analysis.

131
Table 1: Hopepunk Topic Model Probability Report

132
Table 2: Hopepunk Topic Model Word Banks

Topic 1 philipp, verschiedene, junge, genre, gehen, elea, dystopische, das, bekannte, werke
Topic 2 finden, auch, hier, phantastikpreises, roman, seraph, shortlist, zu, ubrigens, des
Topic 3 like, might, imagined, look, futures, world, obviously, asked, name, said
Topic 4 art, science, calling, human, politics, player, ready, concept, project
Topic 5 best, working, solutions, seek, purposeful, find, earth, discovering, citizens, ye
Topic 6 noch, suche, fur, feminismo, silencio, fantasia, lady, fantasy, schon, weg
Topic 7 endzeit, wir, einen, harleen, folge, im, comic, deutschen, mehr, dustere
Topic 8 act, us, imagine, future, grind, hey, leading, reading, oppressive
Topic 9 hopepunk, larp, dystopie, challenge, authentic, kinderrasaga,
badassgoodguys, fur, suche
Topic
10
asked, obviously, name, immediately, forgot, ever, said, life, offenbar, meinen

Table 3: Hopepunk Topic Model Word Banks (Translated from Table 1)
Topic 1 phillipp, various, boy, genre, go, elea, dystopia, the, known, works
Topic 2 find, also, here, fantastic price, roman, cashing, shortlist, to, by the way, of
Topic 3 like, might, imagined, look, futures, world, obviously, asked, name, said
Topic 4 art, science, calling, human, politics, player, ready, concept, project
Topic 5 best, working, solutions, seek, purposeful, find, earth, discovering, citizens, ye
Topic 6 yet, search, for, feminism, silence, fantasia, lady, fantasy, beautiful, path
Topic 7 end time, we, one, harleen, episode, im, comic, German, more, dust
Topic 8 act, us, imagine, future, grind, hey, leading, reading, oppressive
Topic 9 hopepunk, larp, dystopie, challenge, authentic, child's story, badassgoodguys,
fur, search
Topic
10
asked, obviously, name, immediately, forgot, ever, said, life, apparently, mean

133
Appendix J

The chart below depicts the sentiment and tonality analysis conducted from the text content
contained within the data corpus collected from Twitter. Of the text content contained within the
corpus found to be in relation to the locus word, “#hopepunk,” the four most prominent
sentiments and/or tones in association with “#hopepunk” were, in order of significance: joy;
surprise; sadness; and, fear.

The text content within the data corpus contained words from each of the following languages:
Arabic, English, French; German; Oodo; Romanian, and; Spanish.

Chart 1: Sentiment and Tonal Analysis

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Within the domain of testimony, each of the following subsects of testimony is unique from the other given its circumstance or cause, its form, its presentation, and its aim: moral testimony, and what it is to speak as a survivor

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Asset Metadata

Creator Wilkins, Abigayle R. (author)

Core Title Colors of testimony: a palette on the rhetoric of surviving, thriving, and entanglement

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 04/26/2020

Defense Date 04/24/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag #hopepunk,entanglement,OAI-PMH Harvest,rhetoric,survive,testimony,thrive

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Goodnight, Gerald Thomas (committee chair), Durbin, Daniel (committee member), Yang, Aimei (committee member)

Creator Email abigaylw@usc.edu,wilkinsabbey1@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-287267

Unique identifier UC11663303

Identifier etd-WilkinsAbi-8348.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-287267 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WilkinsAbi-8348.pdf

Dmrecord 287267

Document Type Thesis

Rights Wilkins, Abigayle R.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA