Witnessing In a Digital Age: Rhetorics of Memory Spaces after September 11, 2001

Abstract

This project offers an extended inquiry into the ways that multimodality and digitality influence contemporary practices of public memorialization. My project has two primary ambitions. First, I revisit methodologies for analyzing multimodal public memorials. Second, I advocate for public memorials that advance social justice by inviting and protecting a multiplicity of diverse, even competing memory discourses. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the development of public memory studies, spatial rhetorical studies, and multimodal studies. I argue that space, modality, time, lived practices, and marginalized practices must all be addressed to adequately understand how public memorials form discursive networks of power and meaning. This argument is heavily informed by the work of Chicana feminist and decolonial scholars, who contend that socially just history-making uncovers and recovers narratives that have been suppressed or ignored. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze two case studies of multimodal public memorials commemorating September 11, 2001: The Garden of Reflection Memorial in Pennsylvania and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. Chapter 5 offers a methodology for analyzing multimodal public memorials as memory ecologies. I end the project by suggesting several options for deploying multimodality and digitality in public memorials in order to encourage socially just and multivocal memory practices.