“Our section of Santa Rita to where we lived was predominantly if not all Hispanic. And in those days, we weren’t called Hispanic. We were calling Mexicans and that’s okay. I don’t carry a chip on my shoulder. History is just what history is.”
– Olga Chavez
The purpose of this literature review is to explore the interplay between memory studies and the material turn which has created a body of scholarship on monuments, memorials, museums, and archives. It will then review threshold concepts in rhetoric related to collective memory, providing insight for navigating the intricacies of analyzing collective remembrance in Grant County, New Mexico. Finally, this literature review identifies existing gaps in rhetorical scholarship concerning memory. In particular, I point out how little scholarship exists on natural geography and ceremonies which memory scholars should consider as important sites of memory. This chapter outlines how Into Space: Film-book aims to address and explore some of those gaps. By doing so, I intend to show how this case study of the memory Santa Rita can contribute to contemporary scholarship surrounding memory.
Collective Memory
Memory studies is an interdisciplinary field where diverse scholars from history, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, art history and several other fields investigate the complex nature of memory and its role in culture and society. Historians may be interested in conversations about how public memory promotes certain interpretations of the past (Bodnar, Nora). Sociologists study how memory is shaped by social and cultural factors and may also examine how memories are shared and contested within groups, as well as how they can be used to promote social cohesion (Halbwachs, Steinburg). Philosophers may be interested in how public memory is constantly being contested and negotiated (McLuhan), while anthropologists may be interested in how public memory is used to create and maintain social identities (Flores). Scholarship across the disciplines overwhelmingly supports the notion that memory is as much about the anxieties and tensions of the present as it is about the past (Dickinson, Blair, & Ott; Nora, Bodnar, Halbwachs).
However, rhetoricians assert that memory is a rhetorical act that can be used to persuade and to promote social change (Vivian). The field of rhetoric is largely concerned with how publics use symbols to create and sustain shared understandings of the past and present (Gronbeck, Dickinson, et al, Weiser). This is to say that while I am examining public memory of Santa Rita, it’s important to keep in mind the current political and social contexts and possible future outlooks in addition to the stories of the town’s past. Memory is inseparable from the past, present and future. To understand Santa Ritian’s relationship to the town and their sense of home, I must also conceptualize Santa Rita as a place that changes over time. Into Space: Film-book offers both a historical account of Santa Rita when it existed as a physical space, and also as a regional identity less dependent on the town’s geographical location itself but now captured in objects, ceremony, culture, place, and storytelling.
Many scholars in memory studies have used the terms collective memory and public memory interchangeably. Blair et al. write:
The assumption of a shared understanding of the past is captured in the multiple modifiers attached to ‘memory’ in recent years…in referencing this large domain, we acknowledge that the terminology variance makes a difference, but we collapse under the sign of public memory” (6).
Indeed, I believe that it is difficult to delineate different kinds of memory, when so many of the aims of studying memory through these different concepts align under similar goals. However, I want to distinguish public memory from collective memory because of the kind of data analysis each type of memory lends itself to.
Public memory is the way that the past is remembered by a society as a whole. It is often shaped by official institutions, such as governments, museums, and schools. Public memory is often used to promote a particular vision of the past, or to justify certain political or social beliefs. John Bodnar defines public memory as emerging from “the intersection of official and vernacular cultural expressions. The former originates in the concerns of cultural leaders or authorities at all levels of society” (15). Public memory is particularly helpful in understanding memory as a socially constructed act of nation making (Bodnar, Weiser). The study of public memory permits researchers to understand questions such as, What compels a group of people to build a shrine, monument, archive, or museum? or What do different sites of engagement with civic history contribute to rhetorical studies? These questions are helpful for understanding some of the collective rhetorical practices that help Santa Ritians maintain unity.
However, these types of analyses are not always reflective of people’s lived experiences. This is particularly salient for communities in which objects and historical monuments are not preserved because they are lost through migration, diaspora, or even violence (Lazo 200). Public memory is not neutral nor innocent in the colonization of marginalized people, as official institutions are often vested in consolidating and justifying imperial power and documenting the empire as a way to bolster feelings of colonial power (Manoff, Bodnar). This official record is typically created for and by the politically elite, and has historically excluded people from minority backgrounds. When women, indigenous people, people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, people with disabilities, and people of lower economic status are included in the archives, they are often included as objects. Furthermore, as Baeza Ventura, Gauthereau, and Villarroel explain:
This is not to say, however, that US Latina/o archivists, scholars, and activists [are] not involved in the preservation of their community’s historical material. On the contrary, attempts to preserve US Latino as well as other ethnic immigrant and ethnic/racial minority archives often t[ake] place through community efforts, whether within the walls of non-profit centers or in individual’s homes. (18)
In addition to engaging with public memory, I recognize that the memory of Santa Rita has been preserved within the community in more personal spaces. Santa Ritians have saved momentos of the town by tucking away artifacts: a sconce from the Santa Rita Catholic church, bricks the the destroyed Santa Rita school, collections of Chinorama the company magazine. Even the Santa Rita archive is not really an archive, but a manilla folder full of newspaper clinging Terry Humble put together. John Bodnar uses the term vernacular memory, to describe the type of memory that is shaped by the experiences and perspectives of ordinary people. This project recognizes that experiences, shared stories, and cultural traditions of ordinary people shape the memory of Santa Rita.
In contrast to public memory, collective memory is the way that the past is remembered by a group of people who share a common identity. For this project, I will be using the term collective memory as originally defined by Maurice Halbwachs who posits that the act of recollection is a social experience. Halbwachs argues that collective memory is not simply the sum of individual memories, but rather is a social product that is shaped by the group’s shared experiences and understandings. He also explains collective memory is not a fixed or static thing, but rather is constantly being remade and reinterpreted. Although collective memory creates a sense of unity, it also accounts for the varying experiences of individuals.
Public memory and collective memory share several things in common. For example, both recognize that memory is socially constructed, and is constantly being shaped (Halbwachs Chapter 3). Both also recognize how a public, or a group of people who share a common interest or concern, interprets those experiences and their implications on the future. However, this project is particularly interested in examining how the community uses memory to intervene with and persist through a loss of material space or home. This requires me to examine the vernacular and contested memory, which may conflict with the narrative of the official institutions.
While I am adapting Halbwachs term collective memory, I also find it necessary to complicate his argument about how memory becomes erased or forgotten. He argues that because collective memory is a social construct, people who are isolated from their peers and original contexts—those cut off from the place of memory—forget (Halbwachs Chapter 2). I do not believe that isolation necessarily precludes memory, and Into Space: Film-book as a case study disproves this assumption, as many Santa Ritians have moved away or passed away, and all Santa Ritians are removed from their original contexts. They have experienced decades of displacement and isolation, yet maintain a strong sense of community.
As I underline in chapter one, public forgetting around Santa Rita has great rhetorical implications for identity and power in the local area. Halbwachs and Vivian both argue that public forgetting is a natural and inevitable part of the process of collective memory since memory is not a fixed or static thing, but rather a dynamic, ever-changing process. Halbwachs’ believes that as societies change, so does their collective memory. He notes that this leads to the forgetting of certain events or memories, as they become less relevant or important to the collective. In Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again, Bradford Vivian poses that forgetting is often needlessly positioned as a threat to memory, “not merely the opposite of memory; it parasitically haunts the act of recollection, thriving by virtue of stealthy but lethal attachment to its host” (3). He further notes how academics tend to view the act of forgetting as signifying “a loss, absence, or lack—not simply of memory but of live connections with a tangible past” (Public Forgetting 5). While academics tend to view forgetting as a negative force, this is not always the case. Vivian describes how the art of public forgetting, when deliberate, can sometimes empower communities to heal.
However, the compulsion to forget through coercion, violence, or erasure is a devastating ailment. Vivian further notes that “forgetting is admittedly a tragic force when it simply destroys symbolic affiliations with the past, whether by design or disregard, without imagining a more conducive symbolic comportment between present and former times” (9). Thus, while some scholars argue public forgetting is inevitable, the deliberate silencing of history in Santa Rita is far from a healthy and natural departure from past events. In the case of Santa Rita, the stakes are too high to allow its history to be forgotten. Many great things happened in Santa Rita that are important to remember, but the memory of the area has been suppressed in both the relocation and through fears of Communism.
Threshold Concepts in Memory Studies
Just as Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle wrote Naming what we Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies to pin down foundational concepts that shape writing studies, I also find it helpful to name what memory scholars know about memory and how it shapes a public imaginary. Alder-Kassner and Wardle define threshold concepts as “ways of seeing, ways of understanding that change a learners stance” (iv). The following threshold concepts are not only foundational ideas about memory widely discussed among scholars of memory studies, they also assist in the analysis of public memory sites across the Santa Rita community.
First, rhetorical scholars of memory overwhelmingly agree that places of memory create a narrative about the past that evokes current political and social discussions (Gronbeck, Dickinson et al.). Many scholars that analyze museums and monuments have also demonstrated how places of public memory narrate identity. In his book Remaking America, Bodnar asserts that public memory plays a crucial role in shaping American culture. He posits that public memory serves as a powerful tool for fostering national unity, particularly when considering national war monuments (Bodnar). M. Elizabeth Wiser makes a similar argument about national museums. Wiser writes, “national museums are those places that both promote and reflect a national identity in which some significant portion of the nation agrees” (22). At times, places of memory reinforce dominant historical narratives that favor Western ideologies and White peoples (Ohl), foster patriotism (Bodnar, Wiser, Smith), and create a history of peace and prosperity (Taylor). Such idealized versions of the past may obscure the complexities and contradictions of history. To put it simply, history is always contested.
However, places of public memory can also challenge dominant public narratives. Such is the case of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, where Emily Robinson argues the objects in the exhibition are used to disrupt dominant public memories of American Indian boarding schools, which often focus on the “civilizing” mission of the schools and ignore the trauma that many students experienced. Another example of this phenomena is in the Children’s Peace Statue Project. In her article “Children Speaking: Agency and Public Memory in the Children’s Peace Statue Project,” Risa Applgegarth explains how children across the globe campaigned to raised money for a commemorative statue they designed, which they hoped to place at Los Alamos, New Mexico in order to promote world peace during 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through this statue, Applegarth argues how children actuated agency by challenging dominant public memories of the bombings as necessary for keeping world peace. Because history is contested, places of memory can also be interpreted differently by varying groups of people (Gallagher & LaWare). Such conversations about material rhetorics of memory serve to understand how memorial sites around Grant County create space for alternative stories and perspectives. This model proves useful in analyzing the dedication and maintenance of the ladies’ auxiliary memory plaque, as one example. It also assists in understanding the rededication of the Bataan Memorial Park, discussed in later chapters, and how these events may articulate regional identity, advocate for the rhetorical agency of women in a male-dominated town, and confront institutional racism within the mining community.
Second, public memory creates or attempts to create identity through a sense of affiliation or belonging. In Places of Public Memory, Dickinson et al. argue the need for memory studies to examine the actual methods/vehicles through which certain memories are collectively, accepted, and rejected by groups of people. Halbachs posits that what makes a memory endure is that it represents a totality of thoughts common to a particular group (52). M. Elizabeth Weiser builds on this idea in her study of national museums explaining how memory encourages individual identification with a nation or other bordered places. She writes, “The visitor to a national museum [or other place of memory] is persuaded to create an individual self who is aligned with the communal self” (19) and they identify with a “rhetorical ethos that aligns individuals with the particular sets of commonly conceived values and memories that make them American or Austrian, Australian or Argentine” (93). In other words, memory transforms individuals’ sense of identity into more coherent group affiliations. Both Wiser and Bodnar have commented on the vested interest in institutions, particularly national governments, to create spaces of memory in order to foster nationalism, patriotism, and unity. However the same can be said about other identities. To have an identity based in locale, social status, culture, sexuality, race, or ethnicity is to have a shared memory.
In addition to memory’s capacity to narrate identity, it also creates identity through exclusion. In “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Derrida and Prenowitz are concerned that those who control the archives also control the public memory. While their lecture focuses on the archives, the same can be said about other sites of memory. They say: “The citizens who thus held and signified political power were considered to possess the right to make or to represent the law. On account of their publicly recognized authority, it is at their home, in that place which is their house (private house, family house, or employee’s house.” (9) This suggests that individuals who hold political power in society are seen as having the authority to create laws. Because of their publicly acknowledged influence, this authority extended over the personal lives of the society. Those in positions of political power may also shape the rules and norms within their private and domestic spheres. In Santa Rita, the mining company was the absolute authority. In his self-published memoir, Robert Gardener writes,” “[the company] owned the mine, the houses, the store, the hospital, and the workers” (Chapter 2). As noted by several other accounts, the mining town held the ability to fire a worker (Jones), have them arrested (Torres), or exile them from town (Jones). Even today, the mine holds economic power over surrounding communities (Sedillo). Thus, The mining company’s authority permeates all facets of existence in Santa Rita, determining whose stories are told.
Furthermore, Derrida and Prenowitz note how the goals of public memory—at least by their definition—is to achieve absolute monovocality: “Consignation aims to coordinate a single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration. In an archive, there should not be any absolute dissociation, any heterogeneity or secret which could separate (secernere), or partition, in an absolute manner” (10). In analyzing institutional power, Derrida and Prenowitz explain how the role of the archive is to create one memory. In this perspective, there is no room for multiple narratives because archives should unite us into a single group. Such an assimilationist approach to public memory is problematic. It diminishes the diversity of experiences and flattens a complex, multifaceted history into a single narrative by glossing over contradictions.
It also perpetuates structures of power and dominance by prioritizing certain groups’ memories over others. Dickinson et al explain that “Because a collective’s memories are selective, they are seen as also deflecting other memories” (9). Memory is not only a rhetorical act of selection—what story gets told. It’s also an act of deflection—which stories are erased or overpowered. The narratives elevated through memorials, textbooks, national holidays, etc. highlight some stories while ignoring memories that don’t align with a particular arc. Weiser likewise notes that this is the “paradox of unity and exclusion” (187). Into Space: Film-book seeks to confront the dominant memory of Santa Rita by highlighting the varying experiences and perspectives of those who were forced to leave. In fact, the narrative twist of the documentary frequently unfolds as a result of the juxtaposition of Santa Ritian’s experiences and emotions.
Materiality of memory
The paradigm shift, commonly referred to as the “material turn,” has expanded the traditional understanding of rhetoric by emphasizing the significance of the physical, sensory, and embodied dimensions of communication. As a consequence of this development, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the relationship between materiality and public memory. Historically, the field of rhetoric focused on the study of linguistic communication. Since the late 1960s, there has been a growing interest among rhetorical scholars in exploring how material objects or “things” are rhetorical. Most of the scholarship on public memory in the field developed as a result of the material turn.
The material turn in rhetoric can be traced back to the late 20th century when scholars began to challenge the dominance of language and discourse in rhetorical studies. One of the early figures initiating the material turn is Kenneth Burke, who argues that rhetoric is fundamentally about the use of symbols to mediate between people and their environment (Rhetoric of Motives). Burke says, “A doctrine of consubstantiality, either explicit or implicit, may be necessary to any way of life. For substance, in the old philosophies, was an act; and a way of life is an acting-together; and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them consubstantial” (21). This passage underscores the importance of having shared elements or common ground in any way of life or social interaction. Burke’s work helps redirect the focus of rhetorical studies away from solely analyzing texts and towards examining the context. It also shifts the emphasis from persuasion as the primary goal of rhetoric to identification, which is the process by which individuals or groups create a sense of shared commonality or identity. Burke highlights the role of shared sensory experiences, tangible objects, and common understandings in effective communication and interaction.
Notably, in Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations, Diane Davis calls for a reevaluation of the foundations of rhetoric, suggesting that understanding communication and persuasion requires looking beyond traditional models and theories and considering the deep, often unexamined, aspects of human interaction and responsiveness (p. 2-3). This departure from a purely linguistic focus lays the foundation for the material turn, as scholars recognize that communication involves much more than just words and texts. Thomas Rickert’s book, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being, also marks a significant moment in the development of the material turn. Rickert says that rhetoric, “must diffuse outward to include the material environment, things (including the technological), our own embodiment, and a complex understanding of ecological relationality as participating in rhetorical practices and their theorization” (3). He expands the boundaries of rhetoric to encompass the material environment, arguing that the spaces, technologies, and physical surroundings in which communication occurs have a profound impact on communication. This perspective opens new avenues for exploring the intersection of rhetoric and materiality.
Since then, rhetoricians such as Carole Blair have become interested in the analysis of physical objects and environments, rather than just focusing on the words and ideas that are used. Carole Blair suggests that to study material rhetorics of memory, we might start by understanding the effect of objects—not what they say—but what they influence people to do or say (23). In “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality,” Blair theorizes that rhetoric is inseparable from the study of materiality:
No text is a text, nor does it have meaning, influence, political stance or legibility in absence of material form. Rhetoric is not rhetoric until it is uttered, written, or otherwise manifested or given presence. Thus we might hypothesize as a starting point that at least one of its basic characteristics (if not the most basic) is its materiality. (18, emphasis original)
Blair suggests that any text, whether written or spoken, only gains meaning, influence, political significance, or legibility when it is physically manifested in a material form. As the title of the article suggests, Blair goes on to argue that memorial sites, such as monuments, memorials, and commemorative spaces, exemplify the materiality of rhetoric. She explains that these sites are not merely collections of words or symbols but are constructed from physical materials and have a tangible, sensorial impact on visitors.
As a result of the material turn, more rhetoricians look to monuments, memorials, and artifacts as texts and argue that these objects are not simply passive carriers of meaning, but that they actively participate in the construction of meaning which may change over time (Barnet & Boyle, Edbauer Rice). These objects can shape our understanding of the past by providing us with physical reminders of events and individuals. They can also shape our understanding of the past by the way they are interpreted and used by different groups of people.
Places of Public Memory
Scholars often cite French Historian Pierre Nora’s scholarship from 1984 as a starting place to engage in conversations about places of public memory (cited by Dickinson et al. 31, Weiser 38, Ohl 2, Vivan “Memory: Ars Memoriae”). Nora’s lieux de mémoire serves as the foundation for understanding how memory is constructed and transmitted because it emphasizes the role of material objects and practices in shaping our understanding of the past. Lieux de mémoire or memory sites, are, “any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community” (Lieux de Mémoire xvii). These diverse “sites” have emerged as vital means for the preservation and transmission of collective memory, effectively anchoring the past within the present. Nora’s work creates an entry point for scholars to examine non-material rhetorics of memory. However, the field of rhetoric has largely used Nora’s scholarship to analyze more tangible places of memory—monuments, memorials, museums, cemeteries, archives, and historical records. Such analyses allow rhetoricians to discuss how places of material memory help a public make sense of its past, present, and future.
In particular, place endures as an important apparatus for transmitting public memory. Halbwachs theorizes that is because the act of remembering is the process of bringing together a totality of like memories (Chapter 3). As noted by scholars such as Wiser, Rice, and Dicksinson et. al, places create memory through their attachment to history via sight, sound, touch, smell. Dickinson et. al write: “Place has survived as a recognized memory apparatus perhaps longer than any other. But place is important for a second reason as well. Particular kinds of places are more closely associated with public memory than others, for example, museums, preservations sites, battlefields, memorials and so forth” (24). This establishes how certain places, such as museums and memorials, are closely tied to public memory and reinforces how the rhetorical analysis of material memory sites help scholars understand the past, present, and future. Weiser builds on this idea to suggest that certain places of public memory are not just powerful because they house materials and stories, but because they invite visitors to experience a place, to “recreate the story within themself and thus to shape and distort it on the case of their own internal narratives” (Weiser 19). It may be that places of memory have such power because of their materiality. As physical sites, they can directly impact people’s bodily experience, either reinforcing or undermining the symbolic meaning embodied in the place. The materiality of particular memory places allows them to influence visitors in both intellectual and visceral ways.
Jenny Rice is a scholar whose work often intersects with the study of memory, particularly in the context of trauma, affect, and materiality. While she may not be primarily labeled as a memory scholar, her research and contributions within rhetoric and composition often involve the examination of how memory is constructed, embodied, and mediated in various communicative and material contexts. She says:
One of the most common approaches to rhetoric and composition scholarship investigates how spaces are textualized (as well as how texts are spacialized)…This approach sees spaces and places as texts that signify a range of histories and debates. Just as a text is composed and rewritten, a city is also composed through the discourses and debates of its contemporary and historical residents” (Rice 10).
Rice’s perspective provides a useful framework for this film-book’s analysis of place and memory in Grant County, New Mexico. Tracing the discourses embedded in the land, memorials, and the natural environment sheds light on how this mining region conveys particular histories and how the people of Grant County cope with their conceptualizations of the past.
Ceremonial, Cultural, and Land-based Memory Sites
In addition to examining the material sites of memory in Grant County, Into Space: Film-book is also interested in the immaterial sites of public memory. Pierre Nora hypothesizes that lived experiences, traditions, customs, and ancestral ties that previously carried memory have been displaced as society has adopted a more historical-analytical approach to memory. He says, “[t]he remnants of experience still lived in the warmth of tradition, in the silence of custom, in the repetition of the ancestral, have been displaced under the pressure of a fundamentally historical sensibility” (“Between Memory and History” 7). Nora is concerned that ceremonial rituals which were once vehicles for collective groups to transmit memory are fading. He suggests they were essentials for keeping the past vibrantly alive through cultural performances of tradition. While I agree that some of these traditions have become less prominent, other ceremonies important to Santa Rita are still very alive and significant to the community. Even today, memory sites manifest as both physical and intangible, fulfilling the purposes of memory preservation, knowledge dissemination, and the fostering of social unity.
As I began this research project, my efforts to understand collective memory were largely focused on the monuments and memorials around Grant County. Through conducting interviews, I came to realize that collective memory is more complicated and encompassing than the series of formal memory sites. I learned about the legend of the Kneeling Nun, a prominent rock formation that overlooks the mining pit; the importance of the Born in Space reunions; and the role of church and religious celebrations. Because of a focus on materiality, by comparison, scholars have written significantly more scholarship on officially dedicated memory sites such as monuments, memorials, and museums than other sites of memory. Through this project, I hope to demonstrate that public memory is equally reliant on ceremonial, cultural, and land-based sites of memory.
I theorize that this is perhaps most true when a public has been intentionally disempowered and silenced because cultural sites of memory are more resistant to compulsory erasure than material memory sites. Blair discusses this paradox of durability in her article “”Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality.” She says, “durable materials may actually render a text more vulnerable…any stone or metal structure, though composed of a hard lasting substance, is more vulnerable to destruction by hostile forces than a book or even an oral speech” (37). As an example of this, the Santa Rita Shrine was severely vandalized in 2018 (Steele). The Santa Rita Shrine is a small plot of land gifted from the Kennecott Copper Company to the Catholic Diocese. It is an outdoor place of worship that houses the statue of Santa Rita which was removed from the Santa Rita Catholic Church before it was buried under the mine tailings (“The Shrine of Santa Rita”). As I write about in “The Shrine of Chino Mine: Extraction Rhetoric and Public Memory in Southern New Mexico,” the shrine functions both as a place of worship and a memorial to the town (Lycke Martin). However, in October 2018, the protective glass around the altar was shattered and the statute of Saint Rita had her face smashed in. While locals were able to find someone to repair her, this demonstrates the ease by which material sites of memory are damaged, displaced, and erased. On the other hand, rituals and ceremonies are sites of memory less fragile to such destruction.
As testament to the power of ceremony in public memory, Bodnar describes several instances in which minority groups in the United States create or participate in ceremonies as acts of public commemoration. He further suggests that the ceremony can play a dual role, both celebrating differences and contributing to unified national identity. As one example of this, Bodnar reviews a Swedish festival in the Midwest that both honors the cultural roots of Swede Americans and contributes to the idea that Swedish immigrants are “devoted to democratic principles” during the Cold War (49). Bodnar also explains how Irish communities adapted St. Patrick’s Day parades and celebrations in order to celebrate their blended cultural history as Irish Americans. He writes:
If commemorative ceremonies allowed ordinary people a chance to enjoy their leisure time and restate the values of the vernacular culture, the same events also afforded members of the rising middle and professional classes within ethnic groups an opportunity to fashion memory symbols that would raise the standing group in the eyes of larger society and secure the group a degree of political influence” (65).
As I will talk about more in subsequent video chapters, the code “military affiliation” emerges as a major theme in the interviews, and Santa Ritians are eager to demonstrate how they are both invested in the fight for fair working conditions and the freedom of the nation—displays of patriotism are evident in the multiple military memorials around Grant County. While filming interviews for this film-book, I was also able to witness the rededication of the Bataan Memorial Park in Santa Clara, New Mexico for which many Santa Ritians returned to Grant County to celebrate. Acknowledging such ceremonies as sites of memory makes possible an analysis of how military affiliation both celebrates Santa Rita’s unique Mexican American heritage and assimilates the community into dominant American narratives of patriotism and national belonging.
While Bodnar showcases how public ceremonies perpetuate collective memory, everyday habitual rituals also powerfully sustain cultural recollection and belonging. As Robin Wall Kimmerer describes:
Ceremony is a vehicle for belonging—to a family, to a people, and to the land…It was, for me, the one thing that was not forgotten, that which could not be taken by history: the knowing that we belonged to the land, that we were the people who knew how to say thank you. It welled up from a deep blood memory that the land, the lakes, and the spirit had held for us. (37)
This definition is the hopeful foil to Pierre Nora’s argument that we are constantly less and less concerned with rituals. It also counters the idea that people are only concerned with world-building, and not our actual connection with memory. Kimmerer goes on to say “That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to a prayer” (37). Rather than seeing places or things as sites of memory. Kimmerer contends that seemingly mundane ceremonies, like pouring out the first bit of the coffee from the coffee pot, are rituals that connect a person to their cultural memory. In the context of Santa Rita, this suggests that rituals such as making the sign of the cross whenever locals see the Kneeling Nun or attending funerals of other Santa Ritians contribute to the community’s endurance despite the loss of place. Even with the destruction of their town, traditions persist which unite the former residents. In the above quote, Kimmerer defines blood memory as a kind of memory that cannot be destroyed by official narratives. She also implies that people have inherent memories because they come from a line of people who are connected to a land. Particularly relevant to indigenous people who have been displaced and dispossessed, this memory cannot be taken.
This idea is supported by a phenomenon I noticed as I carried out interviews for this project. Santa Ritians, without prompting, tend to start their interviews with a discussion of their family history—both by naming their ancestors and telling how their grandparents or great grandparents came to live in Santa Rita. In response to the question, what is your connection to Santa Rita?, Esther starts her interview with, “My connection to Santa Rita goes back generations. My great grandparents were there, my grandparents from both sides, my parents, and then me” (Mendoza). Similarly, Richard begins his interview with a family history: “My grandfather crossed into Texas in Marfa. He was fleeing from Pancho Villa during the Pancho Villa revolution, where my grandfather had been a colonel in the Pancho Villa army. He actually stole my grandmother, and they came into Marfa, Texas. They had four children in Marfa: Maguey, Adela, my dad, and Elena, and then they moved from there to Santa Rita, New Mexico” (Torres 01:38). Their stories situate them as Santa Ritians, not only because they lived there, but because their ancestors did. Nonetheless, their interviews suggest that for this community, the memory of Santa Rita emerges less from the material objects and more from their ancestral connection to place. The conceptualization of blood memory resists control and erasure by affirming that memory resides in both the blood and the relationship with the land.
Relatively few scholars have discussed the connection between memory and land. This idea emerges from the interviews. As a mining town, the workers are tied to the land economically, thus they look to the land for their salaries and sustenance. They grew up looking at the land. MaryAnn theorizes that all Santa Ritians are “in tune” with the land around them. She says, “I believe that we’re all in tune with our surroundings, even at an infancy stage. I’m very, very proud. I love to go camping. I love to sit by a fire. And I’m sure that was since I was born. And we go up to the mountains and cut wood” (Sedillo). MaryAnn talks about how even during mine shutdowns, her family still turned to the land for sustenance. They would take camping trips to the mountains to cut wood and sell it in town. MaryAnn talks about her first job hunting the ground around her house for chunks of turquoise or copper and selling them to tourists at the look out (Sedillo). Kimmer also talks about human’s innate contract with the land—the land is generous and provides for humankind, and so it is human’s obligation to provide for the land. However, for Santa Ritians, the connection between memory and the land around them was even more tangible than its reciprocity.
As noted above, Rickert’s scholarship might also be helpful for understanding land-based memory, introducing the concepts of ambient rhetoric and rhetorical being. These concepts refer to the ways in which individuals are constantly engaged in rhetorical practices that adapt with their environments. Rhetorical being involves not only conscious persuasive acts but also the subtle ways in which individuals interact, communicate, and adapt to their surroundings. Rickert argues “ambience [should be] given a more vital quality; it is not an impartial medium but an ensemble of variables, forces, and elements that shape things in ways difficult to quantify or specify. These elements are simultaneously present and withdrawn, active and reactive, and complexly interactive among themselves as much as with human beings” (9). Rickert suggests that ambience, or the environment and atmosphere in a particular context, is not static or unimportant to rhetorical agency. Furthermore, it’s not something that merely exists in the background without any influence. Instead, it actively participates in shaping the situation. Rickert’s scholarship helps to point out how the geography, topography, and general environment around Santa Rita are part of the rhetorical situation that shapes public rhetoric in the area. However, this also does not fully account for the ways in which the land acts as a site of memory.
Often denied political or economic power, Santa Ritians looked to the land as a memorial. The Kneeling Nun is a rock monolith carved into the mountains. As you drive toward the mine from Silver City, the rock resembles the silhouette of a nun kneeling before an altar in prayer. It once towered over the town of Santa Rita, and is still a local landmark. One participant, Ramón says, “everyone remembers Santa Rita by the Kneeling Nun” (Marquez) which demonstrates how inseparable the town is from the monolith. Olga, another participant, says that the Kneeling Nun is her second church (Chavez). Esther talks about having to lobby to keep the Bureau of Land Management from selling the land under the Kneeling Nun to the mine (Mendoza). For Santa Ritians, The Kneeling Nun acts as not only a landmark; it is a local legend and a symbol of their permanence. She is a geological monument more important and more valuable than the various shrines and memorials around Grant County. Before the evacuation of the town, The Kneeling Nun could be seen from miles away. Today, mining tailings pile up so high that her figure is only visible from one angle.
The video chapters of Into Space: Film-book highlight several examples of unofficially sanctioned memorial sites including the Kneeling Nun and her legend. They also tell the story of the Society of Person’s Born in Space, a commemorative correspondence group founded by astronaut Jack Schmitt and astrophysicist Gil Moore who were both born and raised in Santa Rita. The video chapters also discuss the role of churches and church communities from Santa Rita who helped maintain collective memory through religious celebrations and reunions. By showcasing Santa Rita’s diverse array of commemorative practices, Into Space: Film-book demonstrates how marginalized groups leverage multiple rhetorical methods to resist erasure and persist in collective memory. This project aims to expand conceptualizations of public memory and offer rhetorical frameworks that help illuminate the complex, collaborative processes through which communities construct belonging.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have discussed some of the threshold concepts for memory studies and how they shape my analysis of the collective memory of Santa Rita, New Mexico. I have also discussed some tensions among memory scholars about how it is important to clarify the difference between public memory and collective (or vernacular) memory, rather than conflating these terms. Finally, I have discussed how the material turn led to a rise in the rhetorical analysis of monuments, memorials, museums, and archives but left a gap in the scholarship related to ceremonies and land-based sites of memory. Such informally sanctioned sites of memory may prove to be more resistant to destruction, especially in an area constantly shaped by the control of the mining company. This review provides a foundation for the next chapter of the film-book which discusses how multimodality and hybrid text perhaps offer a method for documenting immaterial and land-based memory practices. If collective memory manifests as participatory, pluralistic and collective, then our methods for studying it must be capable of capturing these dimensions of commemoration and identity.
I hope this research also spurs interest and investigation into a broader range of memory practices, especially for marginalized or displaced groups. Into Space: Film-book demonstrates how marginalized groups, such as the Santa Ritians, resist and confront dominant historical narratives that have excluded or distorted their experiences. They also nurture collective memory and identity in the midst of trauma and the loss of their home, thereby fostering community resilience.The case study of Santa Rita shows how memory persists even when a physical town no longer exists, speaking to the power of material, ceremonial, and land-based practices. My research suggests that memory scholarship must begin to recognize ceremony and land-based sites as important sites of rhetorical agency. Finally, I call for future rhetorical scholarship in memory studies to account for the affective, sensory, and nonmaterial dynamics of recollection. I believe this models a more inclusive and ethical approach to analyzing collective memory.
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