Despite a tradition of theorizing rhetorical aspects that have only recently become popular in the field (for example, embodiment, materiality, spatiality, ecologies), African and African American rhetorics (A/AAR) are infrequently invoked in the U.S. Four tenets of A/AAR—that rhetoric is ecological, communal, embodied, and generative—capture dynamic and often overlooked qualities of public memory places. The International Civil Rights Center and Museum International Civil Rights Center and Museum. “About.” Sit-In Movement, 2018. Web. [Google Scholar]in Greensboro, North Carolina employs these tenets to create a powerful experience and encourage visitors’ social engagement. A/AAR counter hegemonic rhetorical traditions and rearticulate public memory as integral to social justice.

Rhetoric and composition scholars’ almost exclusive reliance on Brian Massumi’s definition of affect has spurred a theoretical and practical divorce between “affect” and “emotion” in our field. This article returns to Lynn Worsham’s Going Postal and argues that to fully scrutinize and respond to what she calls “pedagogic violence,” affects and emotions must be theorized in tandem, especially as violent rhetorics increasingly spread through new media. Through a close reading of Massumi’s work, consideration of alternate affect theories, and discussion of Aristotle’s systematic theory of emotions, I illustrate how inseparable affects are from emotions. I examine the affects and emotions at work in a contemporary example of pedagogic violence—police brutality toward African Americans—and suggest new media not just contributes to but also disrupts violent rhetorics, damaging emotional educations, and negative affective relations, which I explore through a brief analysis of Twitter.