Maggie Ryan vs. MSU: Who is the Agent?

Upon examining Ridolfo and Rife’s “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery”, I could not help but acknowledge the ever-so obvious concept of agency that was brought to my mind. In fact, in its entirety, it is my belief that this case study primarily tries to untangle the controversy of agency and power. The idea of copyright and ownership in itself are directly related to agency. In other words, who owns this? Who was the creator, or agent? Who has the power to use it as their own? And why? All of these questions came to mind when trying to unpack Maggie’s story. To explicitly answer the question of Ridolfo and Rife’s “primary concern”… well, certainly it is rooted in agency.

It seems to me that Ridolfo and Rife suggest a “commons culture” as a type of discourse. Whether or not Maggie Ryan meant to or not, when she participated in a group protest on Michigan State University’s campus, she undoubtedly placed herself in a public discourse, one that made her vulnerable to privacy. R & R assert that this “commons” is determined by its participants. (238). They note, “seeking common values – in this case, the common values between the student protesters and the institution – is crucial in articulating the commons in this case” (238).  So, who are the participants and who are the agents? Like they said, it’s up for debate. On MSU’s side, “they could argue that they took this image out of the commons” (236) in attempts to justify their ownership of it. On Maggie’s side, she should own the image because she owns her body, obviously (another incredibly debated topic: human bodily ownership).

Once again, the controversies of creation, agency, and ownership come into play. There becomes a problem when “a creation becomes disconnected from its origin” (232). Technically, since the university captured the photo first, they would be the assumed “creators”, even if Maggie was unaware of the photograph being taken at all. Ridolfo and Rife claim that the appropriation of the photo must be understood in that context (234) because Maggie was resident of the “commons”. Whether or not she gave permission, “the agency – the power that she engaged in her political protest – was undermined, inverted, and her image took on a life of its own” (233).

Burke, our father of agent(c)y, would have a lot to say about this case study. While he would argue that in his pentad, the agent is the one with the capacity to act, he would differentiate the agent from the one in power. In other words, the “agent” is not always the one in power. He might view Maggie Ryan as the agent in this case as it was she who initiated an action that requested exigency, a protest to be discovered and acknowledged by the media and her university. Though, it seems in the end that the photographer, or the university as a whole, was the one in power. They created the photograph of Maggie and used their power to appropriate and remediate it to their liking.

What remains is the identity and nature of a “commons”. R & R acknowledge the inevitable influences of time and change on a “commons”, just as any other discourse may be affected. They draw on Flessas for additional support, quoting her idea that agency and ownership occur “on a field of endlessly shifting and reforming ‘commons’” (238). As we know, discourses change over time in response to a multitude of factors – culture, audience, agents, etc. Again, these terms work together to define one another. Discourse may depend on agency, agency may depend on audience, etc.

-Samantha Stamps