Abstract

The 2011 phenomenon “Grindr Remembers the Holocaust” represents one of the most controversial artifacts at the intersection of sex, shame, and Holocaust memory. Featuring men who have sex with men posing for Grindr profile pictures at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, this trend was widely condemned as “shameful” across global media. This essay argues, on the contrary, that such images can be read as productive rhetorical acts, particularly as a controversy that instigated discourses to remember and recover long-forgotten homosexual victims of the Holocaust. In particular, I show how these “shameful” images and their framing by others both affirm past homosexual victims and redirect shame toward contemporary critics ignorant of anti-homosexual atrocities under the Nazi regime.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2019-08-08
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2019.1645347
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Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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