| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation analyzes the rhetorical events leading to a white Methodist preachers suicide protest by fire in Grand Saline, TX on June 23rd, 2014. Charles Moore, the self-immolator, killed himself in public to protest the racist legacy of the town, causing a debate about the towns racial memories of the KKK and lynchings. Exploring Buddhism, the Arab Spring, and recent self-immolations in Tibet, this project situates Moores death in the lineage of self-immolations globally and analyzes how this public act attempts to persuade a local audience. Chapter 2 first uncovers contemporary and historical exigencies of self-immolation, analyzing the rhetorical conditions surrounding why people choose this act, such as through the likes of solidarity, enlightenment, and last efforts.^Chapter 3 parses the complex persuasive themes embedded within the act, including dynamics of violence and nonviolence, religion, and sacrifice, and appeals within the act, including transcendence and embodiment. The dissertation then localizes Moores protest by employing an enhanced methodology of public memory. Chapter 4 not only argues for the need of a local methodology to better grasp the intricacies of the self-immolation but also presents a heuristic to understand how such a public death divided a small town in terms of their views on race and racism. Finally, Chapter 5 articulates how public memories of racism created an imaginary framed by both town insiders and outsiders and also explains how Moore embedded public memory discourse in his self-immolation by utilizing a space known for racial crimes, making explicit references to local narratives in circulation, and invoking extremism in action.^Beyond furthering rhetorical studies and public memory, this project presents a methodology that combines auto-ethnography, interviews, and archival materials to contextualize the authors own memories of Grand Saline (his hometown) as they relate to public memory, race, and reconciliation. In doing so, the dissertation makes the case for the field to deploy mixed-method approaches to study acts of extremism and racism in their local and larger contexts. Ultimately, the dissertation shows how individual acts of political extremism have rhetorical power in how they shape and confront the ongoing work of public memory. | |
