L. J. Nicoletti
I don’t agree with Nicoletti’s assertion that “our cities, as well as our campuses, are memorial landscapes begging analysis.” I think he overstates the rhetorical value of memorials, because the experiential knowledge and received knowledge of all individuals inform how memorials are understood. Because of this multitude of potential and shifting interpretations of history, acknowledged by some of the designers of memorials themselves, the rhetoric of memorials can only ever please discrete audiences and provide partial truths.
Memorials, however, are not all created equal. Near where I live is a road named Richard D. Sailors Parkway. It is named for a former mayor of the city of Powder Springs. This named road “memorializes” the office of an individual who was living at the time of its naming, but will at some point also memorialize the individual himself. There might doubtlessly be some who would question the correctness of such a gift to memory but unless the road is one day renamed its name serves no more than an appeal to vanity, suggesting that the political office of this individual was worthier of memorializing than others in the community. It begs the question of how many roads need to be named after individuals, or bridges, or other common everyday constructs before the whole enterprise becomes ridiculous. The point I am making is that sometimes memorials, perhaps the majority of them, serve no rhetorical function at all other than, in the case of the Dr. Bobbie Bailey and Family Performance Center at Kennesaw State University, no disrespect intended, to state that this was an individual of means who one day decided to make a large financial contribution to a capital campaign. There is nothing else to interpret here.
Granted, many memorials are created to serve particular rhetorical functions. I acknowledge that such memorials can be a source of rhetorical analysis, visual, spatial and textual, but I question the purpose of such analysis in the context of the English language arts classroom. I think there is enough already to talk about without going looking for more elsewhere. Perhaps memorials just don’t interest me as much as place. A few years ago I visited Battle Abbey near Hastings in England. The abbey was built by William the Conqueror “out of gratitude for his victory.” The Battle of Hastings, perhaps the most famous date in English history took place in the fields that now lie below the abbey and one can walk around the site and note where significant events were said to have occurred. It’s an interesting place to visit, to see where the genesis of the English language as it now is, took place. But the abbey as a memorial has lost its significance. There are no longer any English nobles mourning their loss of power or French nobles relishing their newfound power. No relatives of the deceased visit with flowers on the anniversary of the battle. English nationalists do not parade and demand the return of true English autonomy. The rhetorical significance of the memorial no longer exists, even though the site is one of the most famous places in English history. And I think that in the space between the pointless memorial of Richard D. Sailors Parkway and the now irrelevant significance of Battle Abbey, lies a rhetorical white elephant, that could yield interpretations in the classroom, but at what cost? I just think there are more worthwhile things to study. History has a way of rendering the past obsolete. I think events post 9/11 have far more significance worthy of study than whatever construct will eventually stand in place of the Twin Towers, again, no disrespect intended.
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