Perhaps the most common rhetorical aid in our culture is the graph. Presented as an object, it is the condensation and manifestation of data: information incarnate. I use graphs because they appear to present this unified field of understanding. It is as if by joining thought and feeling along sets of apparently indisputable axis they can be both the rationalization and visualization of things that resist measurement. When the elusive elements of our psyche are placed in some mathematical relation to the impulses and conditions of our culture of anxiety the graph is a diabolical means of making those things manageable. It is our new rhetoric in the true sense of that word. The desire and deep need for management and productivity overflows from the ever more pervasive corporate culture. It is more enmeshed with our emotional and psychic life than ever and the deep need to make that which is ineffable predictable is the fallout.