Just Remembering: The Experience of Rhetoric and Public Memory
Open Access
- Author:
- Tumolo, Michael Warren
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 01, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Stephen Howard Browne, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Thomas Walter Benson, Committee Member
Rosa A Eberly, Committee Member
James Hogan, Committee Member
Christopher P Long, Committee Member - Keywords:
- National Holocaust Memorial Museum
Committee on Conscience
Hannah Arendt
public memory
rhetoric - Abstract:
- In Just Remembering: The Experience of Rhetoric and Public Memory, I analyze how the rhetoric of public memory texts is experienced, how such experience informs the character and practices of ethics, politics, and justice in the United States, and how we might re-experience public memory in a way that does it justice. The chapters focus on the memorial function of Plato’s Republic, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The President’s Commission on the Holocaust: Report to the President. My primary concern in this dissertation is to analyze how fundamental predispositions limiting human judgment, knowledge, and agency are forged through the experience of the rhetoric of public memorial texts. Although the valence of “limiting” might suggest that this is an undesirable condition, I contend that this limiting is both necessary, and that accounts of human judgment, knowledge, and agency failing to take the role of the experience of rhetoric seriously do more to alienate than enlighten their audiences from themselves and each other. The critical task of rendering the limits of human judgment, knowledge, and agency explicit allows self-conscious reflection on what is guiding our choices.” Human agency (including the capacities of thinking and judging) can be invigorated by coming to a better understanding of how the rhetoric of public memory works. Thus, the primary significance of my dissertation on the experience of rhetoric and public memory is that it offers a way of reclaiming and augmenting ethical, juridical, and political action.