When Memories and Discourses Collide: The President's House and Places of Public Memory

Abstract

This paper proposes a loose model for illustrating how a multitude of discourses are pulled into political contests about the meanings of places of public memory. Specifically, the model suggests that selected discourses circulating around and within the memory place are pulled into the site by publics affectively invested in defining the site in particular ways. As, and after, those discourses collide within the place of memory, some stick and others are expelled—often to reappear in other, and sometimes related, controversies about public memory. These ideas are illustrated through a study of the controversy about how to best remember the past residents of the President's House, site of the nation's first executive mansion, in Independence National Historical Park.

Keywords:

• Public Memory
• Publics
• Place
• Circulation
• Discourse

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2010 Central States Communication Association conference. The author wishes to thank Gail Clendenin and Abbey Wojno for their assistance, and Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College for its financial support

Notes

1. See Holt (2003), Nash (2004), and Ogline (2004) for more extensive summaries of the controversy.

2. Although I recognize that those who study publics and public spheres may take issue with the term public as it is used by Blair et al. (2010), I find their usage of the term useful for this study. Their conceptualization of the groups (or publics) who remember differently recognizes that these groups are not preordained nor do they necessarily share demographic characteristics. Instead, their recognition that these groups of individuals are shaped by and through discourse seems to share much with Warner's (2002) widely accepted definition of publics. That said, one could call these groups by different appellations as well, such as communities of memory (Owen & Ehrenhaus, 2010).

3. Cloud (1996, 1997) takes issue with Condit's conceptualization of concordance as the result of public debate and argues that Condit minimizes the role that material power differences play in policy making.

4. The first item (overall impression of the models) had the following response options: “I love it;” “I like it, with some reservations;” “I'm neutral;” “I don't like it.” The second item (How well does each model commemorate the lives of all the people who inhabited the President's House?) had the following response options: “exceptionally well;” “well;” “adequately;” “not well at all.”

5. Full details on all coding procedures are available from the author upon request.

6. The number of times that each of these themes appears solely on one evaluation card are: Feel (154), Slavery (41), Re-create (35), Insufficient Focus on the Presidency (30), Insufficient Attention to Slavery (29), Ethos (28).

7. See http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/plans/designissues.htm for a discussion of the concerns that emerged when the final design plans deviated from the historical locations of elements of the structure.

8. See comments posted in July 2007, in particular, at http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/guests.asp

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roger C. Aden

Roger C. Aden is Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University