Chapman's Coatesville address: A hermeneutic reading |
| |
| Authors: | John Arthos |
| |
| Institution: | Assistant Professor at Denison University , Granville, Ohio |
| |
| Abstract: | Rhetoric has claimed Chapman's Coatesville address as its own, but the hermeneutic tradition adds to our understanding of it. As a speech act it was intentionally a non‐event, a memorial for its own failure. This was its strange rhetorical purpose and its claim on a posthumous textual life. In a strange way, it is more a hermeneutic than a rhetorical act, an anticipation of its own future life after death. The open‐ended strategy of the speech is a self‐reflexive enactment. Chapman's Coatesville address is a textual model, illustrating the passage from autobiography to rhetorical engagement, from self to community. Because its community is the nation that as yet has not dealt with its darkest problem, the narrative identity of the speech's audience is an identity in process. Caught up in the reception of the speech, we are still being invited to respond to that lynching at Coatesville. |
| |
| Keywords: | hermeneutics performance engagement narrative vision Dilthey Heidegger Gadamer Ricoeur |
|
|
