Public Forgetting

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1. Forgetting in Public Life: An Idiomatic History of the Present

1. The Two Rivers, Past and Present

2. Forgetting Without Oblivion

Part 2. Public Forgetting: Alternate Histories, New Heuristics

3. Hallowed Ground, Hollow Memory: Rhetorical Form and Commemorative Politics on September 11, 2002

4. Historical Forgetting: John W. Draper and the Rhetorical Dimensions of History

5. Cultural Forgetting: The “Timeless Now” of Nomadic Memories

6. Moral and Political Forgetting: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

“Bradford Vivian’s Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again is a critical and provocative contribution to rhetorical inquiry, communication studies, and memory studies. Considering the ever-expanding inquiry into the nature of memory across various disciplines and areas of study, Vivian presents a challenge to memory studies by centering forgetting as a co-constitutive factor in the act of remembering a communal and public past. . . . Offering an engaging and complex discussion about the relationship between memory and forgetting, as well as a convincing presentation of historical and contemporary examples of forgetting the past, Public Forgetting will be valuable to scholars studying memory, rhetoric, and history—especially scholars interested in exploring rhetorics of difference.”

—Hector Carbajal, JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Politics