Commonplace witnessing : rhetorical invention, historical remembrance, and public culture

Commonplace Witnessing examines how citizens, politicians, and civic institutions have adopted idioms of witnessing in recent decades to serve a variety of social, political, and moral ends. The book encourages us to continue expanding and diversifying our normative assumptions about which historical subjects bear witness and how they do so. Commonplace Witnessing presupposes that witnessing in modern public culture is a broad and inclusive rhetorical act; that many different types of historical subjects now think and speak of themselves as witnesses; and that the rhetoric of witnessing can be mundane, formulaic, or popular instead of rare and refined. This study builds upon previous literary, philosophical, psychoanalytic, and theological studies of its subject matter in order to analyze witnessing, instead, as a commonplace form of communication and as a prevalent mode of influence regarding the putative realities and lessons of historical injustice or tragedy. It thus weighs both the uses and disadvantages of witnessing as an ordinary feature of modern public life. --Publisher description Commonplace Witnessing examines how citizens, politicians, and civic institutions have adopted idioms of witnessing in recent decades to serve a variety of social, political, and moral ends. It does so by exploring the rhetoric of witnessing in especially influential idiomatic forms, including survivor testimony, popular memoirs, political speech, civic memorials, and public rituals of forgiveness. The book thus argues that witnessing now constitutes a prevalent mode of address in which many different subjects participate, and not only individuals who possess extraordinary historical experiences of injustice or tragedy. Commonplace Witnessing maintains that reconsidering normative assumptions about which historical subjects bear witness, and how they do so, enhances our understanding of the numerous ways in which rites of witnessing influence public perceptions of historical injustice or tragedy. Invention: Booker T. Washington's Cotton States Exposition Address -- Authenticity: Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments -- Regret: George W. Bush's Gorée Island Address -- Habituation: The National September 11 Memorial -- Impossibility -- Conclusion. Bradford Vivian. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.