Abstract

Rhetoricians of public memory are interested in materiality. Simultaneously, they seek to recover, promote, and commemorate historically marginalized populations. These twin objectives form a paradox: how does one study public memory in contexts where material manifestations are limited or lost to history? What of peoples and cultures whose histories of erasure have left them with insufficient material to stock a traditional museum? To explore these questions, I examine museal spaces, or places of public memory that are atypical when compared to normative museums, even as they maintain some museum-like features. More specifically, I examine the various rhetorical effects of objects within museal spaces. Artifacts refer to genuine, original objects. Where such artifacts are lacking, however, other objects perform important rhetorical work by conjuring a certain commemorative aura. I advance the term aurafact, then, to describe a specific rhetorical strategy: at least one way that marginalized museal spaces use objects to overcome purported deficits in material culture.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; English

Rights

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