Text and experience in a historical pageant: Toward a rhetoric of spectacle

S. Michael Halloran

doi:10.1080/02773940109391212

Rhetoric Society Quarterly Sep 2001

Text and experience in a historical pageant: Toward a rhetoric of spectacle

S. Michael Halloran Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Abstract

Abstract A 1927 pageant at the Saratoga Battlefield illustrates the workings of spectacle, here defined as a public gathering of people who have come to witness some event and are self‐consciously present to each other as well as to that event. Like Debord and others, I emphasize a tension between lived experience and text. Unlike them, I argue that spectacle is itself a lived experience that may be of greater consequence than the rhetorical text. I suggest that rhetoricians should strive to get at the lived experience that may be reflected quite imperfectly in the rhetorical text.

Journal: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published: 2001-09-01
DOI: 10.1080/02773940109391212
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: rhetorical criticism
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Text and experience in a historical pageant: Toward a rhetoric of spectacle

Abstract

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

References (21)

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