Suspended Identification:

Joshua Reeves University of Memphis

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs commemorative artifacts have come to saturate our public culture, many scholars have revisited the question of genre and the commemorative experience. Responding to this work, I argue that by subverting the commonplaces of our commemorative culture, certain works of public memory have the capacity to suspend audiences in a deferred event of identification. I describe the creative potential of this process by arguing that when compelled to forge common ground with an atopon (out-of-place) work of public memory, one can be unsettled in one's ordinary habits and resituated toward the world and toward others. By redescribing the problem of identification as it relates to the disruption of our everyday rhetorical encounters, this article's significance extends beyond public memory and suggests the transformative potential of suspense and the out-of-place in our broader rhetorical culture.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2013-07-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.46.3.0306
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. College Composition and Communication
  2. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  3. Philosophy & Rhetoric

References (58) · 5 in this index

  1. Aoki, Eric, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott. 2010. “The Master Naturalist Imagined: Directed Movement and Si…
  2. Aristotle. 2007. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford Universit…
  3. Balthrop, William V., Carole Blair, and Neil Michel. 2010. “The Presence of the Present: Hijacking ‘The Good …
  4. Barthes, Roland. 1990. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Penguin.
  5. Berger, John. 1977. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.
Show all 58 →
  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Bernasconi, Robert. 1986. Introduction to The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, by Hans-Georg Gada…
  3. Blair, Carole, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott. 2010. Introduction to Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric …
  4. Blair, Carole, Marsha S. Jeppeson, and Enrico Pucci Jr.1991. “Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Viet…
  5. Blair, Carole, and Neil Michel. 2001. “Designing Memories … of What? Reading the Landscape of the Astronauts …
  6. Blakesley, David. 2004. “Defining Film Rhetoric: The Case of Hitchcock's Vertigo.” In Defining Visual Rhetori…
  7. Brockelman, Thomas. 2003. “Lost in Place? On the Virtues and Vices of Edward Casey's Anti-Modernism.”Humanita…
  8. Burke, Kenneth. 1968. Counter-Statement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  9. Burke, Kenneth. 1969a. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  10. Burke, Kenneth. 1969b. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  11. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.”New York: Routledge.
  12. Cameron, Rob. 2003. “Prague Monument to Communism Damaged in Explosion.”Radio Praha, 11 Nov. 2003. radio.cz/e…
  13. Casey, Edward S. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  14. Casey, Edward S. 1993. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomingto…
  15. Casey, Edward S. 2000. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
  16. Clark, Gregory. 2008. “Aesthetic Power and Rhetorical Experience.” In Kenneth Burke and His Circles, ed. Jack…
  17. Davis, Diane. 2005. “Addressing Alterity: Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and the Nonappropriative Relation.”Philosop…
  18. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  19. Dufourmantelle, Anne. 2000. “Invitation.” In Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to R…
  20. Dunker, Christian. 2011. The Constitution of the Psychoanalytic Clinic: A History of Its Structure and Power.…
  21. Foss, Sonja K. 1986. “Ambiguity as Persuasion: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial.”Communication Quarterly 34 (3):…
  22. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. “Language and Understanding.”Theory, Culture, and Society 23 (1): 13–27.
  23. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1997. “Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Ideology-Critique.” In Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in O…
  24. Gallagher, Victoria J., and Margaret LaWare. 2010. “Sparring with Public Memory: The Rhetorical Embodiment of…
  25. Hagopian, Patrick. 2009. The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing…
  26. Hesk, Jon. 2007. “‘Despisers of the Commonplace’: Meta-topoi and Para-topoi in Attic Oratory.”Rhetorica 25 (4…
  27. Hryschko, Myroslav Feodosijevič. 2008. “The (Non)Site of Atopon: Rhetorical Positivity, Hermeneutical Negativ…
  28. Hyde, Michael J. 1994. “The Call of Conscience: Heidegger and the Question of Rhetoric.”Philosophy and Rhetor…
  29. Isocrates. 1990. Against the Sophists. Trans. George Norlin. In The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Class…
  30. Kellner, Hans. 2009. “Does the Sublime Price Explanation Out of the Historical Market?” In Re-figuring Hayden…
  31. Lear, Jonathan. 2006. “Allegory and Myth in Plato's Republic.” In The Blackwell Companion to Plato's “Republi…
  32. Rhetorica
  33. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  34. Muckelbauer, John. 2008. The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem of Change. Albany:…
  35. Ortony, Andrew, Gerald L. Clore, and Allan Collins. 1990. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cam…
  36. Peters, John Durham. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University…
  37. Plagens, Peter. 1995. “What Happens When American Art Goes Public.”New England Review 17 (3): 58–65.
  38. Plato. 1961. The Republic. In Plato: The Collected Dialogues, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 575–844. Princeton, NJ:…
  39. Ratcliffe, Krista. 2005. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Carbondale: Southern Illino…
  40. Reyes, G. Mitchell. 2010. “Memory and Alterity: The Case for an Analytic of Difference.”Philosophy and Rhetor…
  41. Rice, Jeff. 2012. Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network. Carbondale: Southern Illinoi…
  42. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  43. Schwartz, Barry, and Todd Bayma. 1999. “Commemoration and the Politics of Recognition.”American Behavioral Sc…
  44. Smith, Daniel L. 2003. “Intensifying Phronesis: Heidegger, Aristotle, and Rhetorical Culture.”Philosophy and …
  45. Stone, Dan. 2010. “Beyond the Mnemosyne Institute: The Future of Memory after the Age of Commemoration.” In T…
  46. Stoneman, Ethan. 2011. “Appropriate Indecorum: Rhetoric and Aesthetics in the Political Theory of Jacques Ran…
  47. Sturken, Marita. 2007. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero…
  48. College Composition and Communication
  49. Vivian, Bradford. 2001. “‘Always a Third Party Who Says ‘Me’: Rhetoric and Alterity.”Philosophy and Rhetoric …
  50. Young, James E. 1992. “The Counter-Monument: Memory Against Itself in Germany Today.”Critical Inquiry 18 (2):…
  51. Young, James E. 1993. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  52. Zagacki, Kenneth S., and Victoria Gallagher. 2009. “Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North …
  53. Zelizer, Barbie. 2010. About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. New York: Oxford University Press.