Traumatic encounters with Frank Mechau's Dangers of the Mail |
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| Authors: | Jessy J. Ohl Jennifer E. Potter |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Communication Studies, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA;2. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA |
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| Abstract: | This essay examines Frank Mechau's infamous mural Dangers of the Mail as an opportunity to theorize the force of memories contingent upon immediate sensual encounters that operate largely irrespective of actual historical occurrences. Through an analysis of public documents, archival material from the 1930s and early 2000s, and two separate tours of the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building in 2015 and 2016, we argue Mechau's Dangers of the Mail triggers a form of traumatic sense memory that positions audiences within a trauma economy in which sensation functions as epistemological grounding for political struggle. |
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| Keywords: | Public memory sensation affect trauma visual rhetoric |
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