Abstract

ABSTRACTThis research demonstrates how public memorializing can enable practices of the undercommons. Using the Equal Justice Initiative’s Soil Collection Community Remembrance Project as our case study, we demonstrate how coalition-building shapes memory in the creation, rather than viewing, of memorial artifacts. We argue that the Soil Collection CRP enables two practices of the undercommons, Black study and unsettling grounds, and we contribute to conversations in rhetoric, ecology, and memory by offering a geologic approach that emphasizes the erosive quality of time.KEYWORDS: Black studycoalitiongeologypublic memorysoilundercommons AcknowledgmentsThe authors thank the College of Arts & Sciences and Humanities Center at the University of San Diego, E. Johanna Hartelius, Joshua Trey Barnett, Margaret E. Solace, and the anonymous reviewers. We also thank the Equal Justice Initiative and its participants for preserving this memory.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).