This article mines the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur in order to construct a critical framework for the rhetorical analysis of public memory. Through a reading of Ricoeur's concept of “threefold mimesis,” I develop the idea of the “agential spiral.” The “spiral” frames a repetitive yet progressive process in which a series of agents or groups of agents both interpret and act in response to the past. When linked together, these moments of agency form a spiral that metaphorizes the process of creating and deploying public memories across time. I argue that the concept of the agential spiral enables scholars to focus not only on the ways that memories unite human agents synchronically but also on how those memories structure a relationship among agents across time through the performance and representation of agency. I situate this argument within scholarship on rhetorical studies and public memory.
This essay examines accounts of visits to Civil War prison sites, cemeteries, and battlefields that were generated by the popular speaker Anna E. Dickinson during an 1875 lecture tour of Southern states. An ardent Unionist, Dickinson visited places that she believed to exemplify Union sacrifice and Confederate wrongdoing. We analyze her accounts-captured in letters to her mother-in order to understand how this rhetorically skilled public figure used these visits as opportunities for invention and interpretation, generating textual responses oriented toward public memory-making. We argue that her letters enact what we call a pilgrim-critic persona, which both demonstrates an affective connection to places and undertakes a critical investigation of what happened there. Employing the concept of the pilgrim-critic enables this analysis to contribute to rhetorical studies of public memory by highlighting the inventional resources used when visitors interpret their experiences of memory places.
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