A New Kind of Mourning: A Rhetorical Analysis of the 9/11 Healing Fields

• In Event: Creating Identity from Memory

Abstract

This paper contends that the Healing Fields, a temporary public memorial for those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent "war on terror," fulfill a distinct genre of public memorial. The author details the Healing Fields as being neither permanent monuments nor spontaneous shrines, which contain neither official nor vernacular expressions of discourse. The Healing Fields provide public memory scholars with another genre of public memorial for investigation.

Author

• Elizabeth Richard, Arizona State Univ.