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Imagining the Words of Others: Public Memory and Ceremonial Repetition in American Public Discourse

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Imagining the Words of Others: Public Memory and Ceremonial Repetition in American Public Discourse IMAGINING THE WORDS OF OTHERS: PUBLIC MEMORY AND CEREMONIAL REPETITION IN AMERICAN PUBLIC DISCOURSE A Dissertation by ADAM JOEL GAFFEY Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, James Arnt Aune Committee Members, Leroy Dorsey Jennifer Jones Barbour C. Jan Swearingen Head of Department, J. Kevin Barge May 2013 Major Subject: Communication Copyright 2013 Adam Joel Gaffey ABSTRACT Rhetorical analyses of collective memory study how perceptions of a shared past are maintained through public texts. This analysis explores an alternative relationship between rhetoric and remembrance. Rather than study the textual form of public memory alone, I argue that communities actively interpret artifacts of public discourse as public memory. The most enduring form of this practice is ceremonial repetition, or the deliberate recitation of a text during moments of communal observance. When performed effectively, ceremonial repetition imagines a text by highlighting a resonant virtue through public reading. Such strategies to mold the meaning of a text occur through a variety of messages adjoining recitation, such as formal speech, visual display, written testament, or spatial and bodily enactment. Ceremonial repetition illustrates the extensional evolution and legacy of speech in the public imagination. In a range of historically grounded case studies, this work explores the effectiveness and dominant strategies of ceremonial repetition different eras of American public discourse. These examples include the rhetorical invocation of a text within the discursive space of repetition, illustrated in Frederick Douglass’s August First orations on the Emancipation Proclamation in the late nineteenth-century; the pairing of visual icons and ceremonial repetition, as exemplified in official and public readings of George Washington’s Farewell Address within the context of a political flag display during the Civil War; the disjunction of repetition and written reflection, as evidenced by the U.S. Senate’s institutional recitation of the Farewell Address on Washington’s birthday; and ii the emerging genre of repetition performed through multiple voices and resonant scenery, as clarified in a variety of modern performances, such as the reading of the “I Have a Dream” speech by elementary school students celebrating the King holiday. These case studies illuminate various strategies used to translate past words by constraining their meaning for the needs of the present. Though ceremonial repetition offers audiences the opportunity to reconstitute a text’s properties and public legacy, this study concludes that such epideictic practice is most effective during moments of perceived crisis wherein core tenets of a political culture are profoundly questioned or disrupted. iii DEDICATION This work is dedicated to patient teachers. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Anna M. M. Gaffey helped me with everything. Further, each member of the dissertation committee aided the completion of this work. C. Jan Swearingen was an exemplary resource on the classical grounding of ceremonial repetition, and offered valuable insight on the ethics of reading that helped this investigation. Jennifer Jones Barbour witnessed the first semblance of this project in her graduate class on Visual Rhetoric, and was a source of generous support and guidance on investigating the “warp and woof” between word and image. Leroy Dorsey offered important perspective on the norms of public address scholarship. I am grateful for his early questions on the unconventional nature of my case studies. All committee members were receptive and supportive, offering helpful assistance and providing invaluable models of intellectual generosity. No individual was more influential on my thinking about scholarship generally and my approach to this study specifically than my advisor, James Arnt Aune. He was a voice of reassurance in the face of doubt, and encouraged me to see this project for its potential when I could only perceive obstacles. I am grateful for his patience and guidance. Any mistakes or cockamamie claims in this work are solely my own. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION .................................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 Rhetoric and Repetition .............................................................................. 1 Learning Virtue: Education, Repetition, and Invention ............................ 8 Repetition and Presence ........................................................................... 14 Imagining the Words of Others ................................................................ 18 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 23 CHAPTER II LIVING TEXTS ........................................................................................ 30 Speech as Public Memory ........................................................................ 30 Reconstituting a Text: Inherited and Extended Meaning ........................ 32 Memory and Sight: The Epideictic Genre ............................................... 44 Textual Communities and the Thickness of Memory .............................. 57 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 65 CHAPTER III FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AUGUST FIRST, AND THE MEMORY OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION ................. 67 Introduction .............................................................................................. 67 Proclaiming and Explaining Emancipation .............................................. 71 Emancipation, Commemoration, and August First .................................. 76 Frederick Douglass and the Potential of Texts ......................................... 81 Reimagining the Emancipation Proclamation .......................................... 87 Medina, New York—1869 ............................................................ 93 Elmira, New York—1880 ............................................................. 97 Rochester, New York—1885 ...................................................... 102 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 108 vi CHAPTER IV REPETITION, “REBEL FLAGS,” AND THE UNION IMAGE OF WASHINGTON’S FAREWELL ADDRESS .................................. 112 Introduction: Images, Life, and Death .................................................. 112 The Presence of Washington: 22 February 1862 .................................. 119 Speaking, Seeing, and Remembering ..................................................... 126 The Farewell Address as Enduring Testament ....................................... 129 Remembering the Text ........................................................................... 137 A Vision of Commemoration ................................................................. 144 Visualizing the Farewell Address .......................................................... 149 Conclusion .............................................................................................. 157 CHAPTER V MEMORY AS DISPLAY, RECOLLECTION AS PALIMPSEST: REPETITION OF THE FAREWELL ADDRESS IN THE U.S. SENATE ....................................................... 159 Introduction: Repetition in Isolation ..................................................... 159 Deliberative Epideictic: Personifying Washington’s Ghost .................. 164 Memory and Recollection: A Theoretical Distinction .......................... 177 Memory: Locating a Perpetual Display of the Text .............................. 186 Recollection: The Institutional Palimpsest ............................................ 192 The Euphoria of Reading ............................................................ 199 Change From Washington: Relevance of the Farewell .............. 200 Continuity With Washington: Relevance of the Farewell.......... 203 The Farewell Address as Individual Experience ......................... 206 Implications: Thickening the Text as Memory ..................................... 209 CHAPTER VI NETWORKING THE TEXT: A NEW FACE OF CEREMONIAL REPETITION .............................................................. 215 Introduction: No Casino Gettysburg ..................................................... 215 Enthymemes Living in Media Environments ......................................... 227 Flirting With Simulacrum: The Declaration of Independence, 2002-2011 ........................................................... 235 Community Without History: The Constitution in the U.S. House, 2011 ................................................................................. 247 Enacting Proof and Suspending Time: “I Have a Dream,” 2005-Present ...............................................................................
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