Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes

An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures

By Richard Morris

Subjects: American History
Series: SUNY series, Communication and the Struggle for Identity in Postmodernity
Paperback : 9780791434949, 237 pages, October 1997
Hardcover : 9780791434932, 237 pages, November 1997

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Table of contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of figures

1. Introduction

2. Sinners

3. Lovers

4. Heroes

5. Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

This intriguing investigation of an historically embedded cultural struggle over the possession of America's "collective memory" has significant implications for how we interpret cultural conflict in past, present, and future America.

Description

This book advances the thesis that memorials are fundamentally rhetorical and cultural forms of expression, that a careful examination of American memorializing discloses the contours of at least three distinct American cultures, and that shifting visual and discursive memorial patterns across time reveal the ascendancy and subordination of these three cultures and their cultural memories. It unveils a mode of human expression that embodies the ethoi and world views of divergent American cultures--each of which has possessed and continues to seek to possess America's hegemonic voice and to become (or remain) the custodian of America's collective memory.

The unveiling of memorializing as a mode of expression proceeds diachronically and synchronically. Diachronically tracing the contours of American memorial traditions from 1630 to the present provides a nearly cinemagraphic representationof the ebb and flow, the movement and moment of cultural transformation and dominance. This demonstrates why the content of public memory at any given moment in a multicultural society depends largely on the needs and inclinations, the values and the norms, the ethos and the world view of the culture that is dominant at that moment. Within this interpretive frame, responses to Lincoln's assassination--considered as a synchronic balance--provide images akin to still photographs of a specific moment and place that deepen our understanding of memorializing. Taken together, these twin focal points reveal a historically embedded cultural struggle that has significant implications for how we interpret cultural conflict in past, present, and future America.

Richard Morris is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University.

Reviews

"The writing is clear, smooth, mature. The argument is developed gradually; thus, the reader does not have to cut through a dense theoretical and a highly abstract treatment of the subject. In short, the material is accessible. " -- Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University