The Acts of Remembering and Memorializing Assignment

The Acts of Remembering and Memorializing - Assignment Example The rhetoric significance of the artifact becomes the critical issue that invites fresh interpretations that affect the present and the future. According to Foss (1986), Vietnam Veterans Memorial successfully appeals to the visitors because it not only violates the conventional form and expectations but exploits visitors’ personal experience and evokes memories that are unique. Foss believes that aesthetic response and rhetoric response are different. Aesthetic response is designed towards providing visitors with pleasant sensory feelings, especially the visual aspects in terms of color, shape, design etc. But the rhetoric response tends to explore hidden meaning to the shape, color, and environment. The difference between the two is important because aesthetic and rhetoric responses together give credence to the success of the artifact. They ensure that it serves its basic purpose of remembering and memorialization of past which can be interpreted creatively to connect with the present. According to Blair and Michel (2000), the Civil Rights Memorial performs civil rights tactics because the artifact is able to engage visitors and goads them to delve deeper and connect. This is interesting because the artifact is strategically located at Montgomery, Alabama which is rich in civil rights history and on the open plaza which is near to the Church where Martin Luther King served as pastor and where the voting march rights had ended in 1965. Performance plays important role in the remembering and memorializing because the public memorials need to evoke images of the past which should instigate responses from the visitors and engage them in constructive dialogues. Blair and Michel’s ideas closely relate with that of Olson, Finnegan, and Hope because they all agree that public memorials impel rhetoric responses which make people interact not only with the artifacts but also with the historical past.