Rhetorical Burials: Memorial Practices of New Orleans
Open Access
- Author:
- Maxson, James David
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 26, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Debra Hawhee, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Debra Hawhee, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Michele Jean Kennerly, Committee Member
Stephen Howard Browne, Committee Member
Matthew Frank Jordan, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Jazz Funerals
Second Lines
Public Memory
Commemoration
Confederate Monuments
New Orleans
Rhetoric - Abstract:
- Contests over public memory are complex, dynamic, political, and rhetorical. The interdisciplinary study of public memory has, in fact, occupied scholars in rhetoric for the past quarter century. By focusing on the public and social qualities of most memorial practices, contemporary rhetoricians have emphasized the contingent nature of the past, drawn attention to the judgments made to select and sustain memories, and explored the persuasive power of leveraging past events in service of present needs. But why do some memories crop up at unexpected times? What happens when memories are adopted by the very institutions that formerly disavowed and suppressed them? How can scholars in rhetoric studies help explain the opportunistic resurgence of public memories or the deliberate dismissal of traumatic pasts? In order to answer these questions, this dissertation builds from and draws together extensive interdisciplinary conversations in history, geography, sociology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, and rhetoric studies to analyze public memorial practices in New Orleans. More specifically, the case studies in each chapter explore how New Orleans’ funerary rituals—from jazz funerals to cenotaphic naming—are used for commemorative purposes other than mourning and burying the dead. In this study, bodily movement and sound rhetorically express public memory in liminal moments of transition, animating alternative presents, envisioning productive futures, claiming space for the living, maintaining memories of the departed, and defining who is invited to remember. Organized thematically, the first two chapters explore commemorations for the unacknowledged dead, while the final two chapters examine the ritualized burial of traumatic pasts through New Orleans’ musical funerary traditions.