PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

76genres, cultural norms, ideographs, and other signs as they intersect an event.” 145 Thisideological understanding of visuals leads directly to the third principle I have noted,narrative.Third, visual rhetorics are simultaneously bound by narrative and construct newnarratives. Cara Finnegan argues that because images purport to offer a “real” and“natural” view of the world, they can only do so “through framing and construction ofthose views.” 146Texts are always already framed; they are selected, reflected, anddeflected in a way that mirrors cultural narratives. This process of screening emergesfrom an internal or collective narrative. The narrative created within the boundaries of aphotograph frames a specific moment in time. 147Robert Hariman states thatphotography “marks the work as a special section of reality that acquires greater intensitythan the flow of experience before and after it.” 148This particular moment created withinthe image is part of a story and reveals a larger cultural idea formed under the pressure ofsociety. Images, whether photographs, paintings, or quilts are polysemous, always readthrough narratives.The three functions of rhetorical images help us to read the Peace Corpsphotographs as part of a larger cultural rhetoric. These images tell us who we are asAmericans and who we are not. They reveal what it means to be a volunteer in the 21 stcentury and what the third world looks like today.Much is at stake in understanding the Peace Corps’ images. American politicaland cultural history is filled with anxiety about the “other.” Catherine Lutz and JaneCollins, in their intriguing analysis of National Geographic magazine, argue that “[t]hecold war, decolonization, Vietnam, and the rise of the officially sanctioned anxieties