Human beings are alone in imagining their own deaths; they are also unique in their need to remember the dead and to keep on imagining them.
—Peter Hawkins, “Naming Names”
Building on the nature of living memorials that I described in the previous chapter, in this chapter, I address the function of living memorials, making a two-fold argument: First, I contend that living memorials operate as epideictic rhetoric traditionally conceived. Second, I contend that, although they share characteristics with classical epideictic rhetoric, by their nature, living memorials require an expansion and revision of epideictic discourse into what I call revisionary epideictic rhetoric.
As I discussed in chapter one, Sonja Foss defines the nature of a visual artifact as a catalogue of its features. This includes presented elements like space (mass and size), media
(materials), and shapes (forms). It also includes suggested elements, things the audience infers, like concepts, ideas, themes, and allusions. Living memorials, then, share a set of distinguishing features, even though those features will manifest differently in each memorial. By their nature, living memorials are polyvocal, interruptive, instable, communal, material, and self-authorizing. Because these are fluid terms, constantly shifting and sliding into each other, determining the function of living memorials presents a challenge. In this chapter, then, I begin to address the function of living memorials with their most obvious, but also most deceptive attribute: their emergence in response to grief as a species of epideictic rhetoric. Grief has always been the cue for memorialization, whether in the haunting lyrics of the lament, in the carefully followed rites of a funeral, or the spontaneous construction of a modest memorial made from only a cross and a small bouquet of flowers. In this way, regardless of the form it takes, grief is always a visual-material performance, a public display. Grieving practices within communities—as opposed to practices imposed by the state—allow for the construction of their own truth. But they serve another purpose, too. As Gail
Holst-Warhaft poignantly reminds us, “To disappear is another way to die” (104). It is in the comparison of stories, the collection of testimonies, and the painful insistence on keeping the wounds of grief open that the dead can continue to survive, that the living can continue to speak to them. Memorials and monuments are grief made visual, made material, thereby fixing the memory of the dead in a permanent shape.

To explore the epideictic function of living memorials, I begin on the near side of the spectrum where living memorials bleed into national memorials, artifacts whose epideictic function and cultural value has long been established. It is on this side of the spectrum that I locate the AIDS
Memorial Quilt. I tell a fragmented story of the AIDS Memorial Quilt rather than a chronological one. It is a chaotic narrative, one that emerges from the nature of the Quilt. Based upon its nature, I argue that while the AIDS Memorial Quilt confirms the traditional epideictic function, as a living, rather than national, memorial it also manifests features that point to a new form of epideictic rhetoric: revisionary. I define revisionary epideictic as a visual event, one where the primary purpose is to compare stories so as to amplify something the community needs to take up. Everyday, epideictic rhetoric is revisionary because it rewrites history to include the silenced, the marginalized, and the forgotten. The addition of a revisionary function enables the Quilt not only to express grief but also to write a counter-history, rereading the stigma and shame surrounding the AIDS epidemic.
First, I begin with a Fossian analysis of the function of rhetoric, outlining the schema through which scholars can determine the function of a rhetorical artifact. This will comprise the methodology used to establish the function of living memorials located across the spectrum and throughout ensuing chapters. Second, I introduce the rhetorical artifact I will analyze in this chapter, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, as well as justify its placement on the spectrum. Third, I outline the constituent features of an epideictic function since that is the most obvious attribute of living memorials, yielding a set of characteristics by which we can judge whether an artifact fits within that category. Using these characteristics, I analyze how they are exemplified in the AIDS Memorial
Quilt. Fourth, I assess how well the epideictic function is communicated in the Quilt as well as identify revisionary features that go unnoticed, necessitating a revision to our traditional understanding of epideictic rhetoric. Finally, evaluating the revisionary epideictic exemplified in the
Quilt yields insights into the outcomes of the Quilt as a living memorial—the development of its own counter-history.
Determining Function
As Aristotle defines, the function of rhetoric is persuasion. Aristotle charges rhetoric with the task of discovering all the available means of persuasion. In this way, all communication is rhetorical because all communication is influential.
1 Every time we use language, we engage with our audience rhetorically. A conventional conception of persuasive discourse includes the following
1 Foss sees all communication as inherently rhetorical, with persuasion in myriad forms to myriad degrees threading through all uses of symbols.

properties: a claim, reasons (that are overtly expressed linguistically) for the claim, an audience, the intention of the rhetor to get the audience to accept the claim(s) (Blair “The Possibility and
Actuality” 24; Blair “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments” 44). Persuasive discourse requires the ability to clearly communicate these properties no matter the mode. Given the pictorial turn in rhetorical scholarship, a special issue of Argument and Advocacy explored the question of whether persuasive discourse can partake of visual expression, achieving the same function of communicating claims in order to induce action. The consensus is that yes, images can make arguments (Birdsell and Groarke 1). In addition, because visual images and artifacts increasingly occupy our rhetorical landscape, we the need to understand how they function as persuasive discourse. As Sonja Foss argues, “symbols provide access to a range of human experience not always available through the study of discourse” (Foss “Framing the Study of Visual Rhetoric” 303). Visual rhetoric, then, represents an extension of rhetoric’s boundaries.
The function of living memorials as visual rhetoric is not distinctly different from verbal rhetoric. However, the ability of visuals to engage in persuasive discourse hinges on our understanding of persuasion as that which shapes attitudes, behaviors, and actions (Blair “The
Rhetoric of Visual Arguments” 43). Visual rhetoric is persuasive, then, when the visual elements
“overlie, accentuate, render vivid and immediate, and otherwise elevate in forcefulness a reason or set of reasons offered for modifying a belief, an attitude, or one’s conduct” (50). Like verbal rhetoric, visual rhetoric is required to communicate a claim and reasons that support the claim.
Unlike verbal rhetoric, though, visual rhetoric has a number of advantages that heighten the persuasiveness of its discourse. A high number of visuals can communicate a large amount of visual information that viewers can process in a short period of time, something that is not possible with the same quantity of verbal information. Furthermore, there is no alternative to the visual for giving an argument forceful permanence. Verbal arguments only endure as long as they have salience in the oral tradition. Finally, the visual has the power to evoke involuntary reactions from that audience that are just as powerful as, if not more than, purely verbal arguments.
While these insights into the persuasive function of visual rhetoric are important, living memorials present unique challenges. Although the function of verbal and visual rhetoric is persuasive discourse, there is more complexity to the nature of that persuasion in living memorials, a complexity that can be revealed using Foss’ schema. A study of function can reveal how and how well symbolic artifacts work, how they act on people, the motives and ideologies of rhetors as well as how they are naming the rhetorical situation, how cultural ideologies might manifest in visual

artifacts, and how the constraints of the situation might shape both the rhetoric of the artifact and also the function(s) it is able to communicate. Studying the function of living memorials is important because of the uncontrollable participatory effect these visual-material artifacts have on a diverse, often national, audience. Individual contributions to the memorial all come with their own authorial intentions and their own function; the functions that emerge from the convergence of so many conflicting texts reveals a complex, layered quality to the ways we might read memorials and memorial spaces.
Foss proposes the first substantial theory of the ways the visual exists as persuasive discourse. She defines the function(s) of a visual artifact as the action the image communicates for an audience. In other words, the identified function of a visual artifact is the act of persuasion it exerts on the audience. In contrast with an aesthetic approach to analyzing visuals, function differs from purpose. Determining aesthetic purpose involves accessing the creator's intentions or desires.
A rhetorical perspective on visual images focuses on the functions, the acts of persuasion the artifact serves for its audience instead of the creator. Such a focus allows for rhetorical readings of visual artifacts as different audiences encounter new ways of experiencing a familiar image. Viewing function as something communicated by the image rather than by the creator includes three levels of judgments. The first is identifying a function within the image; this function is found through the critic's analysis. Thus, this function is the product of the way the critic has interpreted the data.
This is only one possible function and by no means the "right" one. There are always multiple ways of seeing a visual artifact, and therefore, multiple functions that might be identified. As Foss illustrates with her analysis of the geese that decorate the front yards of many homes in Columbus,
Ohio, one function that seems most evident is the way the geese celebrate suburban life and indeed represent the benefits of such a life: relaxation, playfulness, nature (216). However, Foss notes that using many of the same dimensions could also reveal a function where the geese represent all that is missing from suburban life like the genuine nature that was displaced with the pouring of concrete and the erection of houses (217). Thus, all that is required of the critic is to illustrate how the data led him or her to that conclusion. It is also possible that the critic, upon analysis of the image, may assign more than one function to it.
The second level of function requires an assessment of how well the function is communicated. Such an assessment involves identifying the evidence within the image that supports that function. This is an exploratory process, as the critic discovers connections between the identified function and particular features of the image. In particular, the second level of function

necessitates attention to the stylistic and substantive dimensions of the image. This includes dimensions like medium, materials, colors, and context, among others. Additionally, Foss argues,
"Analysis of the various components of the image to discover their contribution to the communication of a particular function can be supplemented with a comparative analysis, but the comparison is not made to an ideal standard external to the image. Rather, the image is compared to other images with the same or a similar function in an effort to highlight available options in communicating such a function" (217). In other words, looking at similar artifacts can reveal similar functions exemplified in the artifact or functions that are noticeably missing. Reviewing the available functions in other national commemoratives built after a war facilitates an understanding of the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This comparison dramatizes the ways the Vietnam Veterans Memorial performs functions different than those of most war memorials (i.e., a celebration of each lost individual life communicated through the listing of names). A comparison of this nature helps the critic in assessing the function communicated in an image because the critic may discover that there are stronger and more persuasive ways to do so.
Finally, the third level of function analyzes the function itself. Scrutinizing the function is the critic's way of determining its legitimacy. Its legitimacy is measured through the implications of the function. A function could be problematic, for example, because of its likely consequences. For example, Foss describes a trailer house covered with siding made of plastic rocks. One might define its function as communicating the status of stone houses. However, a critic analyzing this function would argue that such a function is not legitimate because the plastic composition of the rocks detracts from that argument. The solution, then, would be to propose other functions that may prove to be more legitimate such as the house is mocking nature and encouraging a separation from it (217).
2 Foss’ three-part schema is particularly useful for the analysis of living memorials. Living memorials have multiple authors, multiple audiences, and the range of participation they elicit from the community presents a challenge for the identification and evaluation of function. In these visualmaterial texts, functions are layered on top of each other making the task of determining the strongest, most legitimate function difficult. Furthermore, living memorials ask us how to read visual
2 It is worthwhile to note, however, that Foss makes an important distinction about determining the legitimacy of the function. Foss defines taste as synonymous with an acceptance of the function. Thus, if one dislikes an image, it is because he or she disagrees with the legitimacy of its function.
This definition of taste departs widely from that of aesthetics. Rather, I'd argue that identifying something not within one's taste does not necessarily prohibit one from assessing its function as valid. The purpose of Foss' schema is to create a rhetorical way of analyzing images rather than an aesthetic one. I'd argue that taste belongs to aesthetics and thus, I do not position it as equivalent to a judgment about the legitimacy of function.

artifacts that may have multiple functions operating simultaneously. In my analysis of the AIDS
Memorial Quilt, I will proceed according to Foss' schema by first identifying the epideictic function communicated by the Quilt, then the evidence of that function, and finally an evaluation of the legitimacy of its function as revisionary epideictic. Analysis of the triadic function of living memorials is facilitated by the six components (polyvocal, interruptive, instable, communal, material, and selfauthorizing) that constitute the nature of these memorials.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
Given the myriad forms living memorials take, I propose thinking of living memorials on a spectrum consisting of living memorials that blur into national memorials and living memorials that bear no resemblance to other memorials and are completely devoid of institutional presence. This chapter addresses the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which exists on the near end of the spectrum where I cluster all living memorials that bleed into national memorials. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a large piece of folk art dedicated to the ongoing AIDS epidemic. Currently, there are over 46,000 individual 3-by-6 foot memorial panels, each the approximate size of a human grave, thus evoking the deaths it memorializes. Thinking of the dead in San Francisco in 1985, Jones posited, “If this were a meadow and there were one thousand corpses lying out here and people could see it, they would have to respond on some level” (qtd. Sturken 196). Each panel venerates a life lived and taken by AIDS or honors the life of someone still fighting AIDS; presently over 91,000 names are represented on the Quilt. Even with such a large number of panels and names, the AIDS Quilt honors only a small portion of the AIDS related deaths in the United States. The NAMES Project, the organization that holds and maintains all the parts of the Quilt, has a simple panel that they’re holding in reserve; it says only “The Last One,” and they hope that one day it will be the last panel ever sewn onto this living memorial.
3
The AIDS Memorial Quilt has its origins in protest. Cleve Jones, a gay rights activist and the creator of the Quilt, organized a march in 1985. Participants marched to the San Francisco Federal
Building chanting “Stop AIDS now!” and taped the names of lost loved ones to its walls, overlaying the façade with their dead and their grief, uniting lesbian women and gay men with other survivors of AIDS. Jones notes that not only could he envision the National Mall and dome of Congress and the Quilt spread out before it but also “individual quilts, collected together” could make “a dramatic,
3 My deepest thanks go out to the staff of the NAMES Project headquarters in Atlanta for their help. Not only did they donate their time by pulling out blocks of the Quilt for me, but they kindly and generously shared stories from the Quilt with me, hidden histories I would not have known otherwise.

powerfully moving statement” (107). What Jones knew was that there were angry men and women with sewing machines, and, like the early years of the AIDS epidemic when they suffered in silence, they began sewing their rhetoric in private with the intention of having that rhetoric “heard” when the memorial was displayed collectively: a material testament to grief, anger, and activism.
The Quilt teeters on the edge of national memorial and living memorial. On the one hand, as
Steve Abbott argues: “the Quilt no longer belonged to those who were making it—it had become a commodity to be used and controlled by the officers of a bureaucratic institution. Once the Quilt was ‘embraced’ by the media, its ‘meaning’ went beyond even the NAMES Project’s control” (qtd.
Sturken 213). Given its status as a national treasure, the Quilt is subject to extreme preservation efforts preventing, as much as possible, decay due to its transient materiality. These preservation efforts are made possible by federal funding, funding not made available to most unofficial memorials. Attached to this funding is temporary housing of the Quilt in its partial displays within the Smithsonian museums. The display of the Quilt in such official locations means that it is also framed by its official sponsorship rather than the modest intentions of the creator of each panel.
Additionally, the Quilt shares similarities with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
4 Both memorial spaces interface with official and vernacular discourse. It is for these reasons that the AIDS
Memorial Quilt is located at this end of the spectrum.
4 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial marks a noteworthy distinction in the evolution of memorialization, acting as a prototype for the memorializing practices in living memorials, and reveals new, emerging function of epideictic rhetoric.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial requires multivalent readings because the memorial site itself evokes supplemental rhetorical activities. Visitors leave items in an effort to relieve the starkness of the memorial and alter the visual field for other visitors. As Blair argues, “Each addition alters the text, for it focuses on a different individual, a different aspect of the war, or a different meaning a visitor has attached to his/her experience of the Memorial” (273). This memorial marks an emerging practice of revision at memorial sites. Blair continues, “The wall, thus, serves as a repository of more than its own story; it admits within its text the multiple decorations, stories, interpretations, elaborations, and arguments that visitors leave at the site” (273). Additionally, the materiality of the wall deserves consideration. The Vietnam
Veterans Memorial is made of mirror-like granite that not only reflects the Lincoln Memorial and Washington
Monument, but also whomever is within its reflective gaze. Visitors and the many activities they engage in before the wall is also “cited.” Thus, this memorial marks a commemorative site that constantly fluctuates in a changing landscape.
Furthermore, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial problematizes the notion of authorship, actively defying the tradition of single-authored memorials. Technically, this memorial is collectively designed rather than product of one individual’s creativity, Maya Lin. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, before it would approve the design, required the addition of the list of names dead and missing. Because the Vietnam Veterans Memorial violates war memorials by not portraying the war as an event worth admiring or its veterans as heroes, the statue of the three soldiers and the flag were both added as supplements to the memorial. This compromise worked to resolve the problem of commemoration by inculcating a more traditional epideictic message of patriotism, valor, and heroism. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial invites active engagement from its audience as they work to resolve the complexity of this memorial as a text, a complexity that finds its roots in the competing narratives—the individuals on the wall, their visitors, the names as a collective representation of the war—found at the wall. In this way, then, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial can be read as a prototype for new memorializing practices, acting as an intermediary between living and national memorials.

On the other hand, though, the Quilt is the product of an intimate community spread across the nation as local groups come together to make a panel. The panels act as testimonies (Sturken
189) of lives lived and of conflicting emotions. One panel reads: “They gave me a medal for killing two men, and a discharge for loving one” (Sgt. Leonard Matlovich). Many panels are anonymous, speaking to the fear of associating one’s name with AIDS. One anonymous panel pleas, “I came here to ask that this nation with all its resources and compassion not let my epitaph read ‘He died of red tape.’” Many of the testimonies within the panels provide not only bibliographic information but also share details from a life unknown to most: “Ricky—You probably don’t remember me. We went to high school together, and you played the organ at my Southern Baptist church. We should have talked but I guess we were afraid. I still am sometimes…Silly, huh? Watch over me.” The sharing of stories is intimate and works to integrate the voice of the dead with the voice of the living, still struggling with regret and sadness, anger and fear. It is this conflict between voices that positions the AIDS Memorial Quilt at the intersection of living memorials and national memorials.
The Epideictic Function
Understanding the Quilt as fulfilling an epideictic function requires first comparing it with traditional verbal epideictic rhetoric for the same reason that we begin with verbal arguments in our efforts to construct what a visual argument might contain. Traditional verbal epideictic supplies a framework for a visual model of epideictic. Although an amorphous category given its lack of defining principle and tendency to be reduced to only its ceremonial properties, 5 epideictic appears initially congruent with memorials and other acts of commemoration based on the shared elements of intent and display. The consequence of focusing only on the elements of spectacle and display is the creation of the specious assumption that epideictic is unimportant for producing choice or action (Oravec 163).
6 However, as Gerard Hauser has argued, epideictic rhetoric plays a role in the public realm beyond just commemoration (5).
7 It operates in civic, professional, occupational, and
5 As Beale argues, the weakest element of epideictic rhetoric is its function as praise or blame. Quintilian notes, “Indeed if we place the task of praise and denunciation in the third division, on what kind of oratory are we to consider ourselves to be employed when we complain, console, pacify, excite, terrify, encourage, instruct, explain obscurities, narrate, plead for mercy, thank, congratulate, reproach, abuse, describe, command, retract, express our desires and opinions, to mention no other of the many possibilities?” (Institutio Oratoria, III, iv, 3, trans. H.E. Butler (New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1933). However, Quintilian does assert that praise and blame are the two functions most relatable to epideictic.
For further discussion see Beale, “Rhetorical Performative Discourse: A New Theory of Epideictic.”
6 Epideictic rhetoric taking the form of display is hardly a negative.
Prelli argues that a consequence of epideictic taking the form of display is that it requires from its speaker and audience an acknowledgement of virtue, creating a civic importance to this genre: “it commands members of a community to join together in thoughtful acknowledgment, celebration, and commemoration of that which is best in human experience” (3).
7 See also Beale; Condit; Duffy; Sullivan; and Walker.

even pedagogical contexts today (Sheard 777). Contemporary scholars have refined the characteristics of this discourse type to identify its message, purpose, forum, and the role of the speaker and audience. When assessing whether an artifact fits within the epideictic genre, these categories are a useful heuristic. The epideictic message communicates praise or blame oriented towards shaping the beliefs of a society. The purpose of epideictic is communal education. The epideictic forum is symbolic, an atmosphere of influence where participants feel a sense of fellowship.
The speaker assumes the role as educator, attempting to give voice to the unexpressed needs of the community, and the epideictic audience assumes the role of witnesses, testifying their reflection and criticism to the world. Each characteristic is necessary to evaluating whether an artifact functions as epideictic rhetoric.
Aristotle defines the epideictic message as any discourse concerned with praise or blame.
Although these subjects might seem simplistic, they serve two important functions. First, the epideictic message creates the opportunity to address values and beliefs that make future political action possible (Hauser 18). In this way, epideictic rhetoric might be described as a rhetorical performance that is a social action on its own (Beale 225) because of the actions it elicits in its wake.
Second, the epideictic message is a joint creation of the audience and the speaker, so the values it articulates strengthen the community’s adherence to them (Carter 210; Oravec 166). Given these two functions, the epideictic message is responsible for shaping the beliefs of a society (Walker 7).
Although epideictic rhetoric is often reduced to commemoration, epideictic rhetoric actually operates as a form of education (Sullivan 71) focused on sustaining the community (Sheard 766) to cultivate responsible action. The tendency of epideictic rhetoric to display, verbally or visually, functions as a kind of communal education. The means through which epideictic rhetoric achieves its function of communal education is through the creation of a shared vocabulary. Hauser posits that the presence of epideictic rhetoric greatly affects the quality of political discussion (5). As
Robert Bellah argues, the public realm requires a vocabulary for expressing public issues and experiences. Thus, epideictic rhetoric inculcates a common language between the speaker and the audience so that they can speak about societal issues. Dale Sullivan argues that this educative function works to habituate appropriate reasoning (logos) and sentiment (pathos) in order to teach the audience the ethos of the community (71). George Kennedy reminds us that the epideictic orator presents “the world as it ought to be rather than as it is” (160) so that public morality might be improved. Instead of focusing on the real city, epideictic rhetoric creates an ideal polis (Loraux
336) both to encourage the people to emulate what is being praised but also to provide them with a

standard by which they can understand their own identity. Bringing the audience into the ethos of the community means defining expectations of societal participation and “its definition of citizenship, and its definition of what it takes to participate effectively—that is, its definition of virtue (Sullivan 73). In addition, epideictic rhetoric educates its audience on the method required to lead the excellence it purports (Poulakos 321).
Unlike his other discourse types, Aristotle assigned no particular forum to epideictic rhetoric.
As Dale Sullivan argues, we might think of the epideictic forum as “the consubstantial space which enfolds participants” (114).
8 In other words, a consubstantial space is one that brings people together in a sense of communion. Michael Halloran and Gregory Clark aptly describe the epideictic space as not simply an atmosphere but an influence (142).
9 The epideictic forum, then, might be described as a symbolic place. Lawrence Prelli adds that even built places “resonate with symbolic implications generated through selective namings, conventions, styles, narratives, and rituals” (13).
The result is a physical design that displays the feelings and attitudes of those who encounter them.
This means that built places are a material embodiment of preferred values, and therefore, witnessing such displays offers unique vantage points for the audience to access this rhetoric
(Halloran and Clark 144). These designed places suggest that the epideictic forum is timeless and continually does “the rhetorical work of redisposing the inclinations of those who enter them from the familiar, everyday world” (Prelli 13). The epideictic forum, whether physical or symbolic, is determined by the disposition created, a disposition that exerts enormous influence in all those who view it.
Given that epideictic rhetoric functions as a kind of communal education, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca account for the speaker’ role as educator:
The speaker engaged in epideictic discourse is very close to being an educator. Since what he is going to say does not arouse controversy, since no immediate practical interest is ever involved, and there is no question of attacking or defending, but simply of promoting values that are shared in the community….For it is not his own cause or viewpoint that he is defending, but that of his audience. (294)
8 Consubstantial is a term that originates with Kenneth Burke: “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” (Rhetoric 21).
9 This perspective on a “sense of place” derives from cultural geographer and American cultural historian, J.B. Jackson.
As he defines it, a symbolic place “varies in intensity; it can be private and solitary, or convivial and social…What moves us is our change of mood…And w hat automatically ensues, it seems to me, is a sense of fellowship with those who share the experience, and the instinctive desire to return, to establish a custom of repeated ritual” (157-58).

The most important aspect of this reciprocal relationship, according to Christine Oravec, is that the speaker and the audience supply the material of the speech. The audience looks for illumination in the display of the speech, as the speaker (re)presents materials the community helped author. The orator shapes his discourse around the common topics held by his audience, applying those topics to a current person or event. Oravec argues, “From this act of application the audience ‘learns’ or
‘understands’ the connection between the principle and the manifestation of the principle, an act of comprehension which illuminates their own experience and increases their trust in the speaker’s judgments” (166). Thus the speaker gives voice to virtues unexpressed by his audience while also demonstrating how a particular event or person exemplifies those virtues thereby educating the audience. The audience’s role is not passive, however. Their job is not just to learn and accept.
Rather, Aristotle assigned the audience the important role of theori, witnesses. Although some scholars interpret this role as mere observation, witnesses are responsible for testifying to the reality of what the speaker presents. The audience is responsible for assessing not only the orator’s skill but also the merit of his argument, speaking back when necessary with the reality they understand. In this way, then, the audience theorizes in preparation for learning and practical action (Oravec 166).
To reprise this heuristic briefly, verbal epideictic requires a message of praise or blame and a purpose of communal education. The epideictic forum is anywhere one has created a space of fellowship. Finally, the epideictic speaker assumes the role of educator as the audience assumes the role of witnesses responsible for testifying the truth to the world. In the next section, I will use the traits of traditional verbal epideictic and read through how the Quilt exemplifies the epideictic function in visual-material terms.