Rhetoric & Public Affairs Jun 2023

Racial Feeling-With, White Acknowledgement, and Rhetorical Quiet within the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Roger C. Aden

Abstract

Abstract The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorates victims of lynching in a three-part experience featuring 800 coffin-size monuments that appear to be suspended in the air. While providing a space for Black grieving, the memorial's design also creates an experience that invites white Americans to feel-with Black grief-yet-hope. This felt experience may produce discomfort for white visitors, as well as white acknowledgement of generations of white supremacist violence against Black Americans. Such an experience is possible because the memorial generates rhetorical quiet or the creative, artful, and public expression of interiority—an attempt to share that which is deeply felt but which often eludes efforts to be adequately communicated through traditional rhetorical/verbal forms.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2023-06-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.26.2.0001
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality multilingual writers

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