Space, Place, and Countervisuality in Montgomery: A Rhetorical Analysis of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Abstract

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) is a site of conscience that simultaneously mobilizes and interrogates the neoliberal cityscape of its location in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, USA. The memorial is comprised of a monument commemorating the more than 4,000 documented lynching victims in the United States and a museum that provides the historical and contemporary contexts for lynching and other forms of racial violence. Located in an iconic city of the African American civil rights movement that is attempting to rebrand itself as a scene of racial reconciliation, the memorial mobilizes discourses of space and place to situate contemporary mass incarceration as the “unfinished business” of the era. This essay addresses the commemorative duality implicated in the NMPJ’s ability to marshal and contest the neoliberal assumptions activated through rhetorics of reconciliation, redemption, post-racialism—and, ultimately, American exceptionalism—to offer a countervisual reading of Montgomery’s cityscape.