Sharing values to safeguard the future: British Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration as epideictic rhetoric

Abstract

Citation: RICHARDSON, J.E., 2017. Sharing values to safeguard the future: British Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration as epideictic rhetoric.

Evoking values or doing politics?

“…[…] It insinuates a moment of communion, in which a community, or a microcommunity, presents itself with a show of its own unity" (Pernot 2015, 98). Detailing the circumstances and consequences of the Holocaust in these national commemorations aims to revivify Our commitment to social values that genocide so clearly transgresses (Richardson 2018a(Richardson , 2018b. These values include the belief that the Holocaust was a catastrophe, to grieve the loss of innocent life, and that we must remember these victims, in order to honour them, to celebrate specific acts of laudable conduct and to revivify our commitment to the shared values of the norm circle (Elder-Vass 2012.…”

“…The national Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) ceremony in Britain is a multi-media and multi-modal epideictic event, featuring a combination of film, music, poetry, candle lighting, and speeches from survivors, celebrities and other public figures (Richardson 2018b). Speeches delivered by politicians at British HMD commemorations draw (and advocate) 'lessons of the Holocaust' similar to those invoked in other multi-ethnic 'bystander' countries, such as the USA (Marrus 2015): the Holocaust is presented as an example of intentionalist prejudice in extremis; the Holocaust was a catastrophe and a great affront to Our values; that We can guard against future atrocities by keeping the prejudice of Others in check; and that detailing the circumstances and consequences of the Holocaust acts to revivify Our commitment to the values that it so clearly transgressed (Richardson 2017(Richardson , 2018a. However, plural first-person pronouns -'we', 'us', and the possessive 'our' -are deictic: their meaning is derived from contextual factors of time and place, and so they can be used to present different perspectives and to signal allegiance with mixed and multiple audiences (Billig 1995).…”

“…This article focuses on speeches delivered at HMD national commemorations by politicians; in a companion piece, I analyse the epideictic rhetoric of non-political speakers (Richardson 2018a). In each HMD national commemoration, a single politician has delivered a speech whose rhetorical task -as with all epideictic rhetoric -is "not just to strengthen listeners in their affinities and aspirations, but also to explain and justify the latter.…”

“…The British HMD commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, of Nazi persecution (inter alia Communists, Homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma, Sinti and Slavs), and the victims of four subsequent genocides (Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur). However, the historic narratives and contextualisation offered in the national ceremonies tend to gloss over any similarities between these genocides -other than that they are all considered genocides because they have been treated as such by the International Criminal Court -and never offer any direct comparison (Richardson 2018a).…”

“…SeeRichardson (2018a) for an examination of the ways that non-artistic and artistic means of persuasion are used in HMD commemoration ceremonies.4 As I first outlined inRichardson (2007), I prefer to use the term 'ethetic' instead of 'ethical' to avoid terminological confusion; I prefer 'pathotic' over 'pathetic' and 'logetic' over logical for identical reasons.…”