A Web of Remembrance:Public Memory in the DigitalAge
A Web of Remembrance:Public Memory in the DigitalAge
Jason Kalin | March 31, 2009
Jason Kalin | March 31, 2009
Public Memory - What & How?
A shared sense of the past, fashioned from thesymbolic resources of community and subject to itsparticular history, hierarchies, and aspirations.(Browne, 1995, p. 248)
Public memory lives as it is given expressive form.(Browne, p. 248)
The performative dimension of public memory is embodiedmost clearly in the numerous rituals and ceremonies thatshape and reshape the body of beliefs and ideas about thepast. (Jasinski, 2001, p. 356)
Public Memory - Who?
Official Culture has a Collective Memory:what is remembered by the dominantcivic culture
Vernacular Culture has a Popular Memory:what ordinary folks remember
Who decides what and how to remember?
Who decides what and how to remember?
Public Memory – Why?
Source of power and authority
Collective identity
Symbolic resource for mobilizing andlegitimating action
What is forgotten?
Carole Blair – Rhetoric’s Materiality
What is the significance of the text’s materialexistence?
What are the apparatuses and degrees ofdurability displayed by the text?
What are the text’s modes or possibilities ofreproduction or preservation?
What does the text do to (or with, or against)other texts?
How does the text act on person(s)?
Blair – Texture of Materiality
What does a text do to, or with, or against other texts?
Enabling
Appropriating
Contextualizing
Supplementing
Correcting
Challenging
Competing
Silencing
Hess – In Digital Remembrance
How do web memorials provide a forum andmedium for expression for the vernacular voice?
In what ways does the construction of memorialsfunction to strengthen the rhetorical impact of anindividual voice?
Vernacular Web Memorials
Contested Memory
Haskins – Archive & Participation
When technology offers the ability of instantrecall, individual impulse to remember withersaway. If archival preservation and retrieval arenot balanced by mechanisms that stimulateparticipatory engagement, electronic memorymay lead to self-congratulatory amnesia (p. 407)
Although making multiple fragments of the9/11 discourse publicly visible and accessible,however, this approach also shifts the burdenof active remembrance to individuals andgroups, effectively disavowing the publicnature of the enterprise (p. 419).
Zehfuss – Forget September 11
Curtails civil liberties in the West
Creates an us v. them mentality
Limits what it means to be a citizen:
We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it.
I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children.
Forgive the unforgiveable
Who are we?
Who are we?
References
•Blair, C. (1999). Contemporary US memorial sites as exemplars of rhetoric'smateriality. In J. Selzer, & S. Crowley (Eds.), Rhetorical bodies (pp. 16-57). Madison:University of Wisconsin.
•Browne, S. H. (1993). Reading public memory in Daniel Webster's Plymouth RockOration. Western Journal of Communication , 57, 464-477.
•Browne, S. H. (1995). Reading, rhetoric, and the texture of public memory.Quarterly Journal of Speech , 81, 237-265.
•Cohen, E. L., & Willis, C. (2004). One nation under radio: Digital and public memoryafter September 11. New Media Society , 6 (5), 591-610.
•Foot, K., Warnick, B., & Schneider, S. M. (2006). Web-based memorializing afterSeptember 11: Toward a conceptual framework. Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication , 11, 72-96.
•Haskins, E. (2007). Between archive and participation: Public memory in a digitalage. Rhetoric Society Quarterly , 37, 401-422.
•Hess, A. (2007). In digital remembrance: Vernacular memory and the rhetoricalconstruction of web memorials. Media Culture Society , 29, 812-830.
•Jasinksi, J. (2001). Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in ContemporaryRhetorical Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
•Zehfuss, M. (2003). Forget September 11. Third World Quarterly , 24 (3), 513-528.