Reproducing civil rights tactics: The rhetorical performances of the civil rights memorial

Abstract

The authors offer a reading of the Civil Rights Memorial (Maya Lin, Montgomery, Alabama, 1989) as a set of rhetorical performances that reproduce the tactical dimensions of Civil Rights Movement protests of the 1950s and 1960s. Their reading attempts to counter the reading ofAbramson who claims for the Memorial a conservative political stance. Specifically, they argue that, while the Memorial reproduces the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, it argues for a break with the past in its visual proffer of a politics of difference and a critique of whiteness.