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Polyvocality, as the organizing principle, pervades the other five characteristics of living
memorials. And, more than that, it is the key difference between national memorials and living
memorials. National memorials are univocal and homogeneous. According to Cheryl JorgensenEarp and Lori Lanzilotti, “official expression tends to emphasize an abstract ideal that apparently
does not threaten, and in many ways supports, the status quo” (152). These memorials speak a
symbolic language, highlighting abstract concepts like patriotism to “promote social unity” (152).
The uniform, sanctioned narrative they purport does not invite interpretation. Dwight Pitcaithley,
Chief Historian of the National Park Services, adds: “Monuments, memorials, and anniversaries
often are designed not to help us understand the past, but to generate support or evoke empathy
with our view of the past to the exclusion of often competing views” (51). This is not to say,
however, that national memorials do not interface with vernacular culture. The construction of
public memory through commemorative events inevitably involves mediating between official
agendas and vernacular interests (Bodnar). In fact, Bodnar argues that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is
unique in that it shows how vernacular culture can be more powerful than official interests.
Vernacular culture makes use of commemorative symbols that take the form of material
contributions to the wall in an effort to speak against an official narrative.
Polyvocality, on the other hand, invites ongoing reinterpretation; it is the language of not
only the public but official and vernacular expression as well. Roadside memorials, for example,
negotiate the vernacular and the official given that most states prohibit the construction of such
memorials and offer uniform “drive safely” signs to mark the spot. The result, however, is not an
immediate replacement, but rather the interface of the living memorial with the state sanctioned
sign, which eventually will be the only part of the memorial remaining (Figures 2 and 3). These
memorials have the flexibility to change, selecting and excluding certain “voices,” views, and
materials. Figure 3 illustrates that certain rhetorics, like the sign advertising for bunk beds, are
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rejected by the community and promptly removed. Living memorials demonstrate that an imposed
narrative in a democratic community is highly unlikely, even if the community does intercede to edit
out inappropriate contributions.
As polyvocal artifacts, living memorials embrace more than the multiple authors contributing
to the construction and reception of a memorial. Polyvocality also encompasses the “voices” of the
various material rhetorics that compose the memorial. As a result of this complex amalgamation of
authors and materials, polyvocality encourages multiple readings and makes no effort towards
synthesizing those readings into one message. Gerard Hauser argues that everyday interactions and
rhetorics, both official and vernacular, are inherently polyvocal. As he explains:
[They reflect] a variety of voices that enter a discourse in which everyday objects, acts, and
expression, such as food we eat, markets where we shop, greetings we exchange, clothes we
wear, dialects we speak, and idioms we share are symbolic re-presentations of social reality.
(30)
In terms of living memorials, the polyvocal authorizes not only the people constructing and
contributing to the memorial but also the material elements, the ephemera, to operate as rhetoric
themselves. In particular, Hauser’s focus on different interpretations highlights the fluidity of
polyvocality because the meaning constructed within this discourse is dependent on a changing
rhetorical situation, addressing a range of exigencies.
The polyvocal creates fragmentary combinations of different voices, materials, and vantage
points. Rebecca Jones argues that polyvocal discourse does not create an ideology; rather, it unites
“a chorus of unique voices making a purposefully dissonant song” (para. 11). And since polyvocality
unites individual voices with other individual voices, it mediates the viewers’ attention between the
individual and the project as a whole, thereby changing both individual and communal experiences.
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Neither the individual voice nor the collective chorus asserts itself as supreme. Rather, they
maintain simultaneously both dissonance and harmony.
Polyvocality emphasizes the multimodal, networked nature of living memorials as they
choreograph different rhetorics: official, vernacular, visual, material. Living memorials mediate
networks of human and nonhumans agents, and as such, present a unique challenge for visitors.
Visitors, regardless of which community they belong to, are asked to “read” “multiple actors,
multiple compositions, multiple modalities, and multiple infrastructural resources” (Sheridan,
Ridolfo, and Michel xxvii). Given rhetoric’s distribution, the rhetoric of living memorials emerges
from points of intersection where these factors become proximate to each other. In this way, then,
living memorials are networks of activity. The meaning of these memorials does not originate in the
individual because the artifacts themselves have agency; rather, it is the collaboration of disparate
voices, artifacts of various modes and communities of strangers that make up the meaning of these
everyday performances. The combinations of human and nonhuman contributions make up the
network of commemoration. The result is that the polyvocal nature of living memorials both
organizes and disrupts meaning, all in an effort to advance such a complex rhetoric towards a shared
purpose.
Polyvocality, then, plays out on multiple levels because of the complexity of living memorials.
Polyvocality exists in the hundreds of authors adding ephemera to the overall composition of the
memorial; it exists in the way those materials speak to each other and interrupt each other. Thus,
polyvocal extends an invitation for self-authorization and that invitation is accepted within the
community. On a smaller level, this discursive and non-discursive discourse is dominantly visual. It
includes the way the materials work together and resist each other. We must consider the way the
memorial interrupts and appropriates the space it occupies, and the way that space becomes a vocal
part of the memorial and its rhetoric. Space is one of the multiple modes used for everyday
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composing. All of these “voices” are part of the way living memorials construct meaning. In this
way, polyvocal permeates the myriad characteristics of living memorials because polyvocal is
inherently multimodal. In particular, it is the polyvocal nature of living memorials that results in
their instability.
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