Uploaded 1 March 2000|Updated 15 March 2000 |

Scholars seeking to understand the emergence of cultural memories and their functions have begun attending to the complex processes of public memory and particularly to “the rhetorical processes through which public memory makes its claim on cultural knowledge.” [1] Initially, public memory can be thought of as rhetorical in at least three broad senses. In one sense, the “slowly shifting configuration of traditions” [2] that is public memory effects a collective sense of identity, telling us who we are and where we fit within the larger context of the world. In a second sense, public memory is rhetorical in that the images, events, and culturally accepted arguments contained in public memory serve as the basis for rhetorical appeals [3] Finally, public memory is rhetorical in that it is the site of much dispute and controversy. As Michael Kammen contends: “Memory is more likely to be activated by contestation, and amnesia is more likely to be induced by the desire for reconciliation.” [4]  Thus, we should expect to find evidence of public memories where we find controversies and controversy where we find efforts to develop public memories

The texture of public [5]  memory can be thought of as the result of the contentious disputes provoked by attempts to validate one cultural memory over others. Thus, some attention should be paid to those disputes that controvert public memory and the strategies deployed in securing one interpretation of a “collective past” over others. This article attends to such a dispute, the struggle in England to position the controversial parliamentarian Enoch Powell within its collective memory. In particular, as contemporary controversies almost inevitably find their way onto television, the focus is on the unique impact of television on the struggles over public memory through an examination of Channel Four’s The Trial of Enoch Powell. After rehearsing some of the theoretical issues related to controversy and mediation, I will spend some time examining the various strategies deployed in Channel Four’s program. The paper concludes with some additional theoretical implications for the study of “mediated controversies.”

Controversy can be thought of as a unique intersection of discursive time and space [6] , a point within on-going social discourse when the habitual means of interpreting social reality become disrupted and participants within social dialogue become disoriented. [7]  Given the importance of public memory in defining a sense of collective identity, it is not surprising to find numerous controversies arising over efforts to institute a specific and fixed interpretation of the past. [8]  These controversies over public memory and public memorializing can, thus, be thought of as “interpretive controversies.” [9]

Interpretive controversies are those in which both interpretations and the processes of interpretations are controverted. Combining Stanley Fish’s notion of “interpretive communities” [10]  with work on rhetorical controversies, investigations of interpretive controversies seek to understand the processes by which diverse communities offer and defend their interpretations, and by necessity their interpretive frameworks, while seeking to dispute alternative interpretations and frameworks. A previous examination of interpretive controversy suggests that contending communities might employ arguments like: invoking the interpretation of the author/speaker; identifying the broader ideological and material consequences of an interpretation; referring to the relationship between one text and other texts (say, a film and the novel it is based upon); or invoking the unique experiences of the interpreter. [11]

These strategies however are all dependent upon a clear, although contestable, sense of the context within which both the interpretations and controversy occur. Indeed, as suggested above, controversies come into existence through the disruption of spatially and temporally situated discursive norms; thus, a sense of spatial and temporal context is crucial to most senses of controversy. The purpose of the present paper, however, is to examine a type of controversy that displaces context through simulation: the mediated interpretive controversy. The present study can be thought of as extending the research agenda proposed by Thomas Elsaesser who argues “While the dis-location of our selves in time and space is a fundamental aspect of modernity, especially where personal, cultural or national identity compete with each other as so many intersecting circuits, we have yet to grasp what role the media are playing in this.” [12]

Mediated interpretive controversies are abundant in the contemporary “infotainment” era. Moderated “debates” among political pundits or experts are a traditional and familiar form of mediated interpretive controversy, albeit highly controlled. More recently American television has seen the trend of recreating the evidence and impressions of a criminal trial followed by discussion with the jurors on network shows like Dateline. Indeed, this format has given rise to an additional degree of involvement through the use of Internet websites and 900 phone numbers through which the viewing audience can register their opinion; thereby validating one particular interpretation of events over others. Another means of simulating interaction during these mediated interpretive controversies is through the use of a “townhall” studio audience which stands in for the viewing audience. Thus, we can define mediated interpretive controversies as the simulated contest of divergent interpretations and interpretive frameworks.

On 20 April 1998, Britain’s Channel Four aired such a simulated town-hall debate entitled The Trial of Enoch Powell. Powell, who had died a little over a month before the show aired, was a Conservative MP most remembered for a polemical anti-immigration speech he gave on 20 April 1968 known as the “Rivers of blood” speech. Powell’s speech was so named for its reference to Virgil’s “the river Tiber foaming with much blood” and its hysterical prediction of an England over-run by Commonwealth immigrants of color leading first to American style racial violence and eventually to the oppression of England’s white citizens. During The Trial, Powell was accused of “being a racist who damaged race relations in (the UK)” and tried by a team of prosecutors and a team of defendants in front of a jury of two hundred and fifty individuals brought from throughout the UK.

Before returning to the unique texture of mediation in the mediated interpretive controversy, it might be helpful to review pertinent information regarding Powell and his controversial speech. John Enoch Powell died on 8 February 1998 at the age of eighty-five. The Guardian obituary described Powell as an “enigmatic” “scholar, soldier, statesman, arch-rebel, philosopher, poet”. [13]  Born in Birmingham in 1916 of two Welsh schoolteachers, Powell, who began learning Greek at age five, pursued study of Classics under A. E. Houseman at Trinity College, Cambridge before receiving a Chair of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1938. [14] The beginning of World War II ended Powell’s academic career and he served in the Middle East and India during the war. The end of the war, and the realization that Britain’s empire could not be maintained, brought Powell back to the U.K. and into a life of politics. After numerous attempts to secure a seat in various constituencies, in 1949 Powell stood as the Conservative candidate for the Wolverhampton South-West seat and won by a considerable margin in the election of 1950. He would hold this seat until 1974 when, in a disagreement with the European Unionist policies of the Heath government, he resigned from the Conservative party (and, indeed, urged his constituents to vote Labour). [15] Powell returned to politics as a member of the Ulster Unionist party and remained in Parliament until 1987 when he lost his last election effort.

Powell’s political career was marked with controversy but he was known as a statesman who would speak eloquently in defense of his convictions. Indeed, as Joe Rogaly comments, “His true weapon, wielded with much force throughout his life, was his mastery of English. His speeches were magnetic . . . The rhetoric was compelling, the eyes hypnotic, the flat Midlands accent in harmony with the intensity of the speaker’s obvious emotions.” [16]

On 20 April 1968, Powell gave the speech which would fundamentally redefine his political career. [17] The speech, delivered to the Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre, made him a household name to both those who supported his opposition to immigration and to those who believed him a contemptible racist. [18]  In the speech, Powell opposed the lax immigration policies allowing significant influx of Commonwealth citizens into the U.K. and warned of American-style racial conflict which might erupt. While the speech did not deviate from his general nationalist, capitalist political themes, it seemed aimed more at galvanizing political support than at opening a genuine dialogue regarding race and immigration. And, indeed, while both parties later adopted policies of restricting immigration, [19] Powell’s incendiary language led Tory leader Ted Heath to fire him from the Shadow Cabinet. [20]

The speech itself begins with a review of the duties of a statesman, the chief of which is “to provide against preventable evils,” [21] and then turns to rehearsing a conversation between Powell and a constituent in which the constituent predicts “In this country, in fifteen or twenty years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” Powell then turns to statistical information supporting, at least numerically, an increasing Commonwealth influx of 50,000 a year. In addition, Powell notes that these new immigrants are concentrated primarily in London and the Midlands (including his Wolverhampton constituency). Powell’s solution to this problem is the encouragement of re-emigration. Powell also argues against “anti-discrimination laws” which would promote the immigrant “negro” to a special status by preventing citizens from discriminating in their private affairs.

The next major section of the speech focuses on the danger of alienating British citizens in their own country through the influx of immigrants. Support for this claim is provided through an anecdote of an elderly landlady from Wolverhampton who finds her neighborhood overwhelmed by Negro families to the point where “her white tenants moved out.” The elderly white woman becomes the victim of harassment:

She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning picaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they [do] know. `Racialist’, they chant.

Powell goes on to warn that the notion that immigrants will seek integration into British culture is a “ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one to boot.” Further, laws designed to protect ethnic immigrants from discrimination provide legal weapons for the division of British culture. In this context, Powell warns: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.”

Powell concludes by observing that the “tragic and intractable phenomenon” of American racial unrest may be coming to British shores through their own actions. He calls for “resolute and urgent action” to avert the threat and, finally, notes that “to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

The speech had an electric impact and led hundreds of London dock workers to stop work and march on Westminster chanting “good old Enoch.” [22]  A little over twenty-four hours later, under pressure from other Shadow Ministers, Ted Heath, Leader of the Opposition, removed Powell from his position as Shadow Minister of Defence.

“Even in death he continued to provoke controversy.” [23] While Thatcher, Major, Hague and Prime Minster Blair paid tribute to Powell, Heath declined comment. Even Powell’s funeral proved controversial. As a warden of St. Margaret’s (the church supporting Westminster Abbey), Powell requested to lie overnight in Westminster Abbey, the only politician to have that honor in this century. The decision drew considerable protests from Bishops who felt the decision would give respect to Powell’s reputed racist attitudes. Chief among these protesters was Wilfred Wood, the Bishop of Croydon and a black man, who argued “Enoch Powell gave a certificate of respectability to white racist views.” [24] Thus, even in death the poet/philosopher/statesman continued to provoke controversy primarily due to the address given in Birmingham in the spring of 1968. [25]

Moments of public address, or more often fragments of these moments, take their place in our collective memory often situated as turning points in our collective stories. The speeches of Churchill in World War II or of King during the American struggle for Civil Rights or, in its own way, the speech delivered by Enoch Powell on 20 April, all are situated within our collective memory and, as such, become ways of understanding the speakers and their place in our cultural legacy. That such speeches are subjected to the vivisection of sound byte editing does not so much reduce their potency in public memory as create a greater sense of uncertainty. For instance, the phrase “rivers of blood” does not appear anywhere within the actual text of Powell’s speech; yet, the phrase has developed a kind of metonymic relationship with the speech and, in turn, a synecdochic relationship to the speaker himself. Of particular interest here is the question of how such sound bite fragments might be interpreted? And, further, how might the speaker then be positioned within collective memory?

This question of where an individual should fit in the narrative/s of public memory has long been a rhetorical one, embodied by one of the oldest genres of rhetoric, epideictic – the speech of praise or blame. Aristotle, for instance, considered epideictic a form of education whereby citizens were presented models of civic conduct. [26]  This process of deliberating about the worth of an individual is also present in the speeches of accusation (kategoria) and self-defense (apologia), genres of public address instantiated into both political and judicial systems as well as the general give and take of a public relations driven culture. [27]

Within the context of “accusation” and “apologia,” The Trial of Enoch Powell was clearly rhetorical. However, beyond the simple acknowledgement that rhetorical appeals were issued during the program, The Trial can be thought of as rhetorical in two additional ways. First, The Trialwas, ultimately, about interpreting the meaning of Powell’s incendiary 1968 speech and its lasting impact on British culture. Second, The Trial embodied the genre of epideictic through its focus on Powell’s character and the clash of accusatory and apologetic discourses. What makes this rhetorical exchange unique, however, is the impact of mediation on the deliberation over issues of public memory.

The impact of mediation on notions of public address can hardly be denied. The kinds of lengthy speeches and debates common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been replaced by a rapidly paced exchange of fragmented information, which Neil Postman and others have called our “media epistemology.” [28]  Yet, the impact of mediation on the way an audience interprets messages may also be thought of in terms of the text of the message. In other words, beyond the epistemic question of mediated messages there is a question of the aesthetic experience of rhetoric in a mediated/simulated reality. An aesthetic sense of rhetoric is recovered from Nietzsche by Steve Whitson and John Poulakos who elaborate on the experience of rhetoric as one of being caught up in the artistic rendering of the world. [29] Their argument, which separates the aesthetic experience of rhetoric from any epistemic function, parallels Postman’s in that the experience of pleasure (or pain) supersedes the deployment of rationality [30] ; although Whitson and Poulakos do not bemoan this shift. Additionally, Whitson and Poulakos privilege the aesthetic experience of face-to-face oratory over mediated forms of rhetoric. Thus, our excursion into mediated and aesthetic rhetoric situates, but ultimately begs, the question of the experience of mediated rhetoric.

Walter Benjamin’s often cited essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” provides a way of thinking about the experience of mediated rhetoric and, in turn, the unique textual dynamics of mediated interpretive controversy. As Benjamin notes:
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original. [31]

A similar observation might be made about the aesthetic experience of rhetoric. The mechanical (digital) capacity for reproducing moments of public address also complicates any sense of the contexts in which an audience renders such rhetoric sensible and where these moments fit within the configurations of public memory. Following Benjamin’s observation about the reduction of aesthetic aura in the reproduction of art, investigators of the mechanical reproduction of rhetoric would do well to attend to the complex obfuscation of temporal and spatial contexts. Additionally, as with art, rhetoric can be thought of as undergoing “various changes in its ownership” as our understanding of both speaker and audience change over time. [32]

The Trial of Enoch Powell is an example of these changes in the reception, interpretation, and controversy of rhetoric and an examination of the way the program undermines contexts may yield some understanding of the way the televisual complicates the process of interpretation and the production of public memory. Following from the previous observations, attention will be paid to the specific ways the program displaces relevant contexts of interpretation, specifically the contexts of space, time, subjectivity, and textuality.

The Trial opens with a fade-in to the stage upon which the trial will take place as an actor reads the now infamous line “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.” The stage of the trial, the primary location of our viewing over the next hour, resembles the foreboding prophecy in that, like prophecy, it seems disconnected from the material world. The stage, in effect, functions to dis-locate the proceedings, depriving viewers and disputants of any clear sense of place and, as such, deserves further attention.

At the center of the forum is a platform painted as the Union Jack, at the two lower corners are desks from which the prosecution and defense will make their cases, at the center a single podium with microphone from which witnesses will testify. Surrounding the Flag-forum, though initially obscured by darkness, are bleachers upon which the audience (read: jurors) sit in judgment. There are, however, no clearly visible walls to this arena, the edge of our vision obscured by darkness and punctuated only by large photographs of Powell at various stages in his career.

This apparently free-floating arena hovers in an ambiguous abyss which provokes varied and contradictory interpretations. Perhaps, the darkened forum represents the deep unconscious of the United Kingdom, a place where collective judgment and identity can be deliberated within this private space of contemplation. Or, perhaps this deliberation takes place shrouded by the mists of time, in a limbo between past and future (and, indeed, my analysis of the atemporal context supports this reading of the site). Standing at the center of the flag, each witness’s story becomes a part of the larger narrative of the nation. Indeed, the opening statement of the program’s presenter, Trevor Phillips, frames the deliberation to follow with the question “how does he [Powell] deserve to be remembered?”

A more ironic reading of the staging of this “trial” is to interpret it as consonant with Powell’s own view of Britain. Here we truly have a Britain separated from the world, isolated from the encroachments of Europe or the Commonwealth and, true to his speech, the only witness to the proceedings on this isolated island is Powell himself. Each witness, then, stands at the center of the Union Jack, the heart of the empire, and gives their account before the sole judge of British-ness, Powell. Indeed, whatever else might be said of the physical setting of The Trial, the centrality of the British flag creates a clear sense that British national interests and identity, whatever they/it might be, are the primary concern.

Read in the context of Powell’s recent death, on the other hand, this place-less location might be thought of as a kind of deliberation in the hereafter, a kind of final judgment regarding the incendiary politician. Thus, in a strange blend of legal proceeding, television talk show, and This is Your Lfe, The Trial sought to render the legacy of Enoch Powell and his inflammatory address sensible within the context of British public memory. These various possible readings are, of course, less important than the general characteristic of mediated interpretive controversies to obscure the spatial context of deliberation. Why, we might ask, could The Trial not be set in a pseudo-courtroom, in a mock-up of the Parliament chamber, or a fabricated set of “pearly gates?” Yet, the tendency of such shows is to set the primary location of discussion and presentation within some ambiguous “no-where.” At some level, of course, the decision to provide such a dark and sparse forum for discussion may be driven by an economic motive for “cheap and dirty” sets; on another level, the ambiguous location may serve to make the various video-clips more sensible (as each clip will instantly transport the viewer to some other place at some other time). Still, deprived of any clear sense of spatially situated discursive norms (the procedures of a courtroom, the customs of Parliament), the viewer of The Trial is deprived of contextually-based cues for interpretation.

While the textual strategies of “nowhere” seem clear, the complicit strategies of “no-when” are both subtle and pervasive. The sense of simultaneity in television seems lost as television has become, according to William Uricchio, a “storage medium” [33]  in which various fragments of the past are mixed with moments of the present and images of the future. The power of the televisual to disorient any clear sense of linear, historical time seems inherent in the medium. Göran Sonesson characterizes “televisual narrativity” as: “this continuous stream of pictures, which never stop to let us discover their full spatial determinacy, contains ever new retentions and protentions, fragmentary stories, which are potential but never developed.” [34]  What remains to be examined is the way such disorientation is utilized in the process of simulating public memory. In terms of The Trial, the disorientation of temporal contexts serves to undermine any sense of an historical context within which interpretation might be rendered. Four instances within the program are pertinent to understanding the strategies involved in constructing an “atemporal” context.

The first instance of establishing an atemporal context is the familiar use of a video montage in the opening moments of the program as a “reminder of the man and the speech.” In seventeen fairly rapid scenes lasting only a few minutes, the viewer is presented a “synopsis” of Powell the man. The opening scene is of Commonwealth citizens, apparently from India, departing a plane accompanied by a voice over about the influx of Commonwealth citizens into Britain at the rate of “50,000 a year.” The second scene is of Powell surrounded by people and police officers as we are told he was “already a controversial figure.” However, we are given no context for his controversial nature, nor reminded of his education, war service, or party standing for, by the third rapid scene, we are already to the speech. In this third scene we see Powell himself telling the story of the “whip-hand over the white man.” The remaining scenes take us from the immediate aftermath of the speech, dock workers marching chanting “We want Enoch Powell” and Ted Heath’s decision to sack Powell, to Powell’s ultimate demise and images of those paying respect at his funeral.

In these images, Powell’s decades in Parliament are defined wholly in terms of the 1968 speech on immigration and, in the decision to open this montage with images of immigrants, the speech is contextualized wholly in terms of the “problem” of Commonwealth immigration. The historical context of the encouragement of immigration following World War II is entirely neglected. Further, reactions to the speech are divided into the official response, Heath stating: “I considered that this was likely to make race relations more difficult,” and the popular, a dock worker saying: “[What] Enoch Powell said was right. We say there’s enough of them, we can’t take no more.” The voices/stories of immigrants and their experience of the speech are excluded, as are any long-term consequences of the address and/or the racial context of contemporary Britain. The “rivers of blood” are removed from any prior context, in the sense of Powell’s philosophy and politics, or any posterior context, in the sense of changing race relations. While these issues become points of contention throughout the deliberation, the montage serves primarily to disconnect the speech and the man from any temporal contexts.

Capitalizing on this atemporal context is the use of video to create apparent causal connections, a second characteristic. “Video testimony” is used on a number of occasions to provide visual evidence for the two sides and two instances suggest the power of video to create causal connections across (and perhaps in spite of) temporal distance. The first involves causality in the sense of effect as the defence offers video evidence depicting riots of Muslims during the Salman Rushdie affair to support Powell’s belief that diverse cultures could not live compatibly.

The second instance involves influence as John Tyndall, leader of the racist British National Party, is shown praising the speech. Tyndall says, “Powell said in his speech what we had been saying for years. But, of course, he was a leading public figure and people would listen to him in the way that they weren’t prepared to listen to us.” In response to this evidence offered by the prosecutors, the defense relies on the metaphor of “lancing a boil” of racist feelings and that in Tyndall, some “unpleasant puss came out.” In both instances, the video evidence is offered as if contemporary with Powell’s speech, although neither are, and no effort is made to account for the intervening decades between the Rushdie affair and Tyndall’s remarks on the one hand, and Powell’s address on the other.

The arguments surrounding the Tyndall videotape characterize a third aspect of the atemporal context – one uniquely related to the argumentation involved in The Trial. During the course of The Trial, both sides debate the merits of Powell’s prediction of racial unrest and eventual oppression of whites. The prosecution charges that the prediction was mainly for dramatic effect, that any violence resulted largely from Powell’s incendiary speech and that contemporary Britain looks nothing like the dire future of Powell’s prophetic vision. The defense responds at various points with a line of argumentation that relies largely on the atemporal context for effectiveness. The argument goes like this: if there is, in contemporary Britain, serious racial tension and unrest, then Powell was right and should be valorized for his accuracy. If, on the other hand, Powell was wrong and contemporary Britain is not characterized by racial violence and the oppression of whites, then Powell’s prediction did its job, averting this dangerous future and preserving the nation. This line of reasoning, similar to Lyotard’s notion of the differend [35] , depends on the uncertainty of the temporal context. Lyotard discusses a similar argument attributed to Protagoras who demanded payment from one of his pupils. The pupil refused saying that he had yet to win an argument and, thus, should not have to pay. Protagoras responded to the effect: “but if I win this argument you must pay me and if you win it will be a victory in argument for you and, therefore, you must pay me”. The ambiguity that allows this dilemma is the uncertain position of “now” to “then” because “now” is both the time when the deliberation occurs and part of the period about which deliberation occurs. [36]

A fourth characteristic of the atemporal context of The Trial occurs in a similar dispute to the one described above. One of the most criticized aspects of the speech was the “letter” from the elderly woman who now found herself surrounded by “negroes” and who was subjected to chants of “racialist” and even had excreta shoved through her letterbox. Witness Peter Fiddick, journalist and author, contended that numerous attempts were made by the press to find such a woman or, for that matter, any elderly boarding house owner who was surrounded by immigrants. No verification was ever found. John Muller who is identified as a friend of Powell and a Wolverhampton police officer in 1968 refutes Fiddick’s testimony. Muller is harshly cross-examined by prosecutor Andrew Neil, newspaper editor. Neil demands to know why this woman was never verified for the press, why no one ever found record of her existence and Muller counters that the police commissioner saw no reason to accommodate the press and chose instead to honor the wishes of Powell and the woman. The ephemeral nature of individual recollection is not unique to the televisual presentation: what is unique is the containment of such recollection. In other contexts, the impulse for corroboration of Muller’s account could be pursued; here in the no-when of television such impulses are ignored, the veracity of the account left to the judgment of the viewer.

Both time and space, however, are understood through our unique position within the social world, or our subjectivity. [37]  Here, in the process of memorializing an individual, the question of subjectivity is crucial and, given the circumstances of The Trial, problematic. In an interesting exchange between defence witness Sham Sharma, a Powell friend and constituent of Indian descent, and the prosecution, Sharma is asked whether Powell would have regarded Sharma as “British.” Sharma replies, the “man must speak for himself.” A request that is ostensibly impossible and, yet, in many ways, Powell does speak for himself – even getting the last word on how he would be remembered. [38] Through video clips and the recitation of his words, Powell’s ghost lingers around the darkened edges of the amphitheater – present and yet absent in these proceedings bent on determining his legacy.

The blurring of presence and absence makes the deliberation problematic. How can the jurors determine the worth and intent of a person in that person’s absence? Yet, his image and words linger, almost demanding to be positioned within British public memory. The problem seems captured in the remarks of one of the jurors: “It is a shame because that one speech has actually overshadowed the man – the man himself – and that is all the people of this country can remember, that one speech.” A speech fragmented, reproduced, and repackaged for mass consumption through televisual public memory.

The speech text, then, presents the final relevant context and it, like the others, is substantially affected by the televisual medium of The Trial. Obviously, one aspect of the textual fragmentation is the abundance of intertextual referents (e.g., Tyndall, Rushdie, Billy Bragg, “cool Britannia”) juxtaposed with the text of the speech. A second more subtle technique is the elision of sections of the speech so that various separated sentences or ideas are presented as if adjacent. One prominent example of this occurs at the opening of the program, as the lights come up, when an actor reads the infamous “River Tiber” sentence followed by “Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, that would be the great betrayal.” However, in the original speech text those sentences are separated by three sentences referring to the United States and “that tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic.” Removing this reference, indeed presenting the speech segment as if it were whole, further dismisses international and historical contexts, presenting Powell and his speech in a vacuum of British-ness.

Overall, the presentation of the speech fragments focuses on those most graphic and disturbing images (the “whip hand,” the letterbox excreta, and the “river of blood”) to the exclusion of historical and international contexts, Powell’s argument about the duty of the “statesman,” or the statistical and legal argumentation within the text of the speech itself. In this way, the televisual functions to enhance the fragmentation of the speech and the assimilation of these fragments into public memory. Deprived of spatial, temporal, subjective, or textual context, these fragments, much like the stage of the production, are left to drift through collective memory.

In one sense, The Trial of Enoch Powell reifies the isolationist and ethnocentric politics of the man himself. Removed from any context (historical, global, racial), The Trial creates a vacuum of British-ness largely similar to the one Powell seems to propose in his speech. Perhaps this is part of the reason the audience/jurors acquitted Powell on the charges of “being a racist who damaged race relations in [Britain].” Yet, even this interpretation is largely ground-less, bereft of any material conditions or consequences outside those simulated within the sixty-minute presentation. What remains to be explored in future inquiries is the relationship between such simulated deliberations, particularly over what will constitute collective memory, and the material conditions existing outside the darkened forum of The Trial and its ilk.

It is not my purpose to demonize the televisual process of interpretive controversy or to valorize a romantic version of nineteenth century deliberation. Interpretive controversies, like controversies in general, are abundant and occur in official arenas, street corners and neighborhood meetings in addition to their ubiquitous presentation on television. What is necessary is a continued examination of the way that the television medium affects the processes and results of deliberation and the production and dissemination of public memory.

Footnotes:

[1] Stephen Browne, “Reading, rhetoric, and the texture of public memory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no. 2 (1995): 238.
[2] Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 13.
[3] Thus, in an Aristotilean sense, public memory serves as topoi for the process of rhetorical invention. The effective rhetor will draw on the collective memory of an audience to find the “available means of persuasion” – or those examples most salient to the audience.
[4] Kammen, 13.
[5] I am not satisfied with the term “public memory” primarily due to an uneasiness with the ideological baggage tied to the notion of public by theorists like Habermas; however, for want of a better general term I use public memory more in the sense of a dominant narrative of culture than in a sense of some consensual agreement.
[6] Here I am concerned with the symbolic sense of time and space, best summed up in a phrases like, “we don’t do that sort of thing here;” or, “this is not the right time for that sort of thing.”
[7] See, Kendall Phillips “A rhetoric of controversy,” Western Journal of Communication 63, no. 4 (1999): 488-510.
[8] See, Phillips “Rhetoric;” and Stephen Browne, “Remembering Crispus Attucks: race, rhetoric and the politics of commemoration” Quarterly Journal of Speech 85, no. 2 (1999).
[9] Kendall Phillips, “Interpretive controversy and The Silence of the Lambs” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28, no. 3 (1998): 34-36.
[10] Fish explains: “interpretive communities are made up of those who share interpretive strategies not for reading but for writing texts. In other words, the strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around.” Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980) 14.
[11] Phillips, “Interpretive,” 37-44
[12] Thomas Elsaesser, (16 April 1999) “‘One train may be hiding another’: private history, memory, and national identity,” Screening the Past, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/reruns/rr0499/terr6b.htm (December 1999)
[13] Obituary, the Guardian, 9 February 1998, 13.
[14] Clive Betts, “Finding the Welshman within,” Western Mail, 9 February 1998, 2.uu
[15] Michael Portillo, “Farewell to the Tories’ nearly man,” The Times, 9 February 1998, 20.
[16] Joe Rogaly, “‘The best mind in politics – until it’s made up,'” Financial Times, 9 February 1998, 8.
[17] For a more thorough analysis of the text of the speech itself see, David Lloyd-Jones, “The art of Enoch Powell: The rhetorical structure of a speech on immigration”, in Politically Speaking: Cross-Cultural Studies of Rhetoric, ed. Robert Paine (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), 87-111.
[18] Portillo, 20.
[19] “Understanding Enoch”, The Times, 9 February 1998, 21.
[20] Chris Moncrief, “Baroness Thatcher leads the tributes,” Western Mail, 9 February 1998, 1.
[21] Speech excerpts in this section are taken from Enoch Powell, Reflections: Selected Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell, ed. Rex Collings (London: Bellew Publishing, 1992), 161-169.
[22] Andrew Pierce, “Lines of Virgil that stumped party faithful,” The Times, 9 February 1998, 4.
[23] Andrew Pierce, “Heath refuses to join Blair and Thatcher in tribute to Powell,” The Times, 9 February 1998, 1.
[24] Christopher Morgan, “Abbey vigil for Powell enrages bishops,” Sunday Times, 15 February 1998, 1.
[25] For analysis of the reception of Powell’s rhetoric by his British audiences see, Sandra Wallman, “Refractions of rhetoric: evidence for the meaning of ‘race’ in England”, in Politically Speaking: Cross-Cultural Studies of Rhetoric, ed. Robert Paine (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1981), 113-139.
[26] Thus, speeches of “praise” or “blame” were instructional in that they highlighted appropriate and inappropriate civic conduct. For more on Aristotle’s vision of epideictic see, Gerard Hauser, “Aristotle on epideictic: the formation of public morality” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1999): 5-23.
[27] In contemporary society, entities as diverse as corporations, politicians, celebrities and universities employ individuals whose main function is to protect the institution/entity in case of accusation/scandal. For more examination of the contemporary rhetoric of accusation and defense see, Sharon Downey, “The evolution of the rhetorical genre of apologia,” Western Journal of Communication 57 (1993): 42-64. And, Kendall Phillips, “Tactical apologia: the American nursing association and assisted suicide,” Southern Communication Journal 64, no. 2 (1999): 143-154
[28] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, Penguin Books, 1985), 44-50.
[29] Steve Whitson and John Poulakos, “Nietzsche and the aesthetics of rhetoric” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79, no. 2 (1993): 131-145.
[30] For many critics, the contemporary “media” age fails to engage arguments and appeals, substituting the sensual (often visual) experience of information for a rational investigation of claims and evidence.
[31] Walter Benjamin, “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” ,
[32] For an analysis of the ways a rhetor can be reconceived by future generations through selective editing of their work see: Zwick, Jim. “The contested public memory of an American icon: Mark Twain’s anti-imperialist writings.” Paper presented at the American Studies Association/Canadian Association for American Studies conference, Washington, D.C., Nov. 1, 1997. In Jim Zwick, ed., Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935. http://www.boondocksnet.com/ail98-35.html (March 14, 2000).
[33] William Uricchio (15 September 1998) “The trouble with television”, Screening the Past ,, (December 1999)
[34] Göran Sonesson (1 April 1996) “Mute narratives: New issues in the study of pictorial texts”, [personal web page] (December 1999)
[35] Lyotard defines a differend as a dispute which “lack[s] a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments.” (xi).
[36] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The differend: phrases in dispute, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 6-8.
[37] Geographer Edward Soja has urged these three components (time, space, subjectivity) be thought of as a “trialectic” of human experience. Edward Soja, “Postmodern geographies: taking Los Angeles apart” in Now Here: Space, Time and Modernity, R. Friedland and D. Boden (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 127-162.
[38] The end of the program shows Powell in one of his last interviews saying, “I wish I had been killed in the war.”