Public memory and private grief: The construction of shrines at the sites of public tragedy

Abstract

Recent violent deaths invoking children in the Oklahoma City bombing and the Dunblane massacre have led to active expressions of private emotion in a public forum. In this study, we examine the rhetorical aspects of spontaneous shrines that develop on the sites of such public tragedies. Our analogue for the creation of these shrines is the private form that mourning activity took in the nineteenth century, often in response to the death of a child. A comparison of the objects and messages left at the Oklahoma City and Dunblane shrines to private mourning rituals of the last century reveals a common cultural meta‐narrative. By promising continuity and certainty in a time of chaos, this meta‐narrative rhetorically negotiates the earliest stages of public and private grief.

Key words:

• public memory
• shrines
• mourning rituals
• cultural meta‐narrative
• commemoration