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Towards a Visual Rhetoric of Witnessing:
Reflections on the Representation of Traumatic MemoryA. Susan Owen & Peter Ehrenhaus
In this paper we articulate the outlines of a visual rhetoric of witnessing, where witnessing is defined as the rhetorical processes and practices through which traumatic memory is constructed. We focus upon three related matters. First, we examine how traumatic memory is theorized within the broader domain of memory studies. Second, we explore how the practice of witnessing -- of giving testimony -- constitutes traumatic memory. And third, we reflect upon the relationships among visual representations of atrocity, rhetoric, and national identity; here we offer our readings of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the photographic collection, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Our tentative position is this: The rhetorical character of witnessing, especially the relationship between images and discourse, reveals the extent to which social trauma has been "worked through," and integrated into national identity. In the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, we find that Holocaust memory achieves canonical narrativity and now fits seamlessly within the American master narrative of national identity as it is defined through a democratic ethos. By contrast, and as reflected in critical commentary about the collection of lynching photographs, AmericaÕs racial holocaust fails to achieve canonical narrativity; at this juncture, these images resist narrativity insofar as they reveal practices inimical to the foundational principles of national identity, defined through that same democratic ethos.
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