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sentations become embedded in the knowledge constructs most viewers take for granted. The students' inability to name important aspects of, in this case, Middle Eastern cultures reflects the process of the knowledge construction of USAmerican media and their own lack of critical engagement with that construction and the assumptions therein. Dr. Wolf's lecture session afterwards challenges students to re-examine those assumptions that underlie the processes of how they come to understand mediated cultural representations Moreover, as McKerrow suggests, critical rhetoric's nominalist nature points to the contingent aspects of cultural terms. This recognition of contingency with regard to assigning names to cultural groups, signifying characteristics of those groups with particular terms, and/or designating the political beliefs or actions of different cultural groups can point in the direction of who might benefit from practices of naming. For instance, Dr. Wolf points out that, situated within the current sociopolitical context, naming the conflict in East Timor a “civil war” benefits those countries that may be complicit in provoking and enabling the conflict by deflecting attention away from them and onto those embroiled in the conflict. In other words, if the conflict is viewed as internal rather than externally aggravated and abetted, those outside countries involved are able to sidestep any responsibility for the devastation in that country. At the same time, this critique (and others like it) suggests that historical contingencies are rarely, if ever, a part of mediated representations of different cultures. Without that background knowledge, Dr. Wolf argues, the process of naming (or constructing terms for) other cultures, peoples, beliefs, and actions becomes abstracted and attenuated, and the symbols are easily appropriated as a strategy of marginalization and domination. Finally, critical rhetoric recognizes that absence is as important as presence in constructing knowledge, particularly as it relates to understanding and interpreting mediated discourse. In the context of the participation assignment recounted in this section, Dr. Wolf's critique of her students' lack of knowledge about important sociopolitical events (like the conflict in East Timor) acted as a way to highlight the discursive power of what is unsaid. For these students, East Timor and the people there were effectively nonexistent. McKerrow, addressing this absence issue, borrows Phillip Wander's sketch of what is not said/seen on television as a way to illustrate this phenomenon: Most characters on prime time conform to conventional standards of beauty—they tend to white or near white, fine-featured, young, well proportions, and of average height. NEGATION: Few characters appear on prime time who are fat. Not many have scars, limps, or protruding lips. Few adult characters are under five feet or over six feet, four inches tall. Not many characters appear to be over 65. When physically “deviant” characters do appear, they tend not to be cast as intelligent, strong or virtuous. (Wander, 1981, in McKerrow, p. 107) The power to discursively erase the existence, in mediated representations, of different ethnicities, genders, classes, and sexual orientation (among many others), is derived precisely from its absence in relation to what is present. Dr. Wolf's critique of mediated body images (described in the previous section) also included an account of what