Memory + Place

Dr. Will Kurlinkus

English 6013, University of Oklahoma
The Practice of Everyday Life

¡  Hope + Resistance

¡  Users vs. Consumers

¡  Strategy: “the calculus of force-relationships which

becomes possible when a subject of will and power (a
proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution) can
be isolate from an environment.”

¡  Tactics: “a calculus which cannot count on proper (a

spatial or institutional localization) nor thus on a borderline
distinguishing the other as a visible totality….because it
does not have a place, a tactic depends on time—it is
always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized
on the wing” (xix).
¡  Bricolage, Metis, Kairos, “Underlife of the classroom”
Examples of Tactical
Resistance
¡  Guaman Poma

¡  Cuban Technology: https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-
XS4aueDUg

¡  IDEO CEO, Tim Brown: “Insight . . .

does not usually come from reams
of quantitative data. A better
starting point is to go out into the
world and observe the actual
experiences of commuters,
skateboarders, and registered
nurses as they improvise their way
through their daily lives. . . . the
shopkeeper who uses a hammer as
a doorstop; the office worker who
sticks identifying labels on the
jungle of computer cables under
his desk” (41).
Place + Space
¡  space vs. place: “a place (lieu) is the order (of
whatever kind) in accord with which elements
are distributed in relationships of
coexistence….space exists when one takes into
consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and
time variables. Thus space is composed of
intersections of mobile elements…space is
practiced place” (117).
¡  Liminal spaces—bridges + borders, contact
zones, plans of transculturation and blurring
Spaces of the Hilltop
¡  What is a community literacy/media project?

¡  Access: “effective community media projects (projects that

generate progressive change) are not about technology
access and support alone, though both are important.
Instead they are also about the type of invention made
possible, the levels of collaboration (online and face-to-face)
they allow, and the planning behind the community
informatics that will allow for the delivery or presentation of
the community work being produced.” 

¡  As Grabill (2007) argues, "the critical issue with respect to the

social impact of information technologies is the extent to
which nonexpert, nontraditional users of technologies,
especially those typically marginalized, can become
productive with advanced information technologies in a way
that expands local capacity to achieve citizen objectives" (p.
12).
Rhetorics of Display
¡  “Aristotle's epideictic is oratory of paramount civic
importance since it commands members of a
community to join together in thoughtful
acknowledgment, celebration, and
commemoration of that which is best in human
experience” (3).

¡  Critical Cartography

¡  Participatory counter-mapping

¡  https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?
ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=40.00184604577574%2C-8
2.99261111108399&spn=0.095333%2C0.22316&z=13&
mid=19fEz58Q1KgsYQw4n6MBlZ54jQzo
Rhetoric/Memory/Place
¡  What do we remember, why, and to which ends and whose benefit?

¡  When we say rhetoric is public—we really mean it belongs to publics/

communities/societies. Not necessarily that it is always out in the world.
1.  Memory is activated by present concerns, issues, or anxieties:
“groups talk about some events of their histories more than
others” (7). We use memory to do things!!
2.  Memory narrates shared identities: we tell similar memories as
passkeys to communities—to show we belong. We remember
community into being.
¡  Examples?
3.  Memory is animated by affect: This affect is often what
differentiates it from history.
¡  Fading affect bias + impossibility of forgetting

¡  Memory is palimpsestic

¡  “A memory place’s rhetoric almost certainly predisposes its visitors to

respond in certain ways, enthymematically prefiguring the rhetoric of
the place” (26)
Public Memory in Place and
Time
1.  Individual: memories in our heads.

2.  Social: Private memories of those already related to one

another—shared experiences.

3.  Collective: Unconnected individuals remembering the

same event—Kennedy Assassination, 911

4.  Public: Remembering that happens out in the open, in

public, often at a stabilitas loci—public hearth=memorial

¡  Restorative vs. reflective

¡  Anticipatory memory

¡  Transactive memory systems

¡  Are there strategies and tactics of public memory?

 People build
their identities
upon public
memory!
“The art could be Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,’ or Louis C.K.’s Louie,
or Shakespeare in Love, or Manhattan, or The Cosby Show, but
at heart, the dilemma is the same: How do I reconcile aesthetic
pleasure with moral disgust? Which of my feelings will win? What
do I do with art I love that was created by a monster?”
 The Pedagogy
of Memory at
the Oklahoma
City National
Memorial
Museum
What is Obermark’s critique and her solutions?
OKC Memorial
•  “productively uncomfortable pathways toward
understanding” (93)
•  “It is implied that remembering the trauma is
educational” (94).

¡  Healing vs. Curing from last week: “Starting a

dialogue about the loss and violence of this
event and what it can mean for children as they
become adults is bypassed in favor of
emphasizing the survival and growth of
Oklahoma City” (99).
“Everywhere You Go, It’s
There”
¡  “we didn’t have school shootings when I was
growing up.”

¡  What is the proper way of memorializing a

traumatic tragedy?

¡  These are real people: true crime podcasts and

shows
Titus Kaphar