“Breaking the silence”: excavating cultural trauma at the Survivors Memorial
Abstract
Content warning: Sexual violence. In 2020, the first permanent memorial to survivors of sexual violence was unveiled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This essay utilizes rhetorical fieldwork to explore how the Survivors Memorial addresses a cultural crypt that silences survivors and erases sexual violence in public memory. I argue that the memorial disrupts the individuation and privatization of sexual violence to name sexual violence as a cultural trauma. In testifying to cultural trauma, the Survivors Memorial transforms individuals into witnesses. Witnessing facilitates survivors’ attunement to personal trauma and calls for memorial visitors to break the silence of rape culture.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Memory
Trauma
and Commemoration
Rhetoric and Communication Studies
violence
and history
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 203–217
- Publication date
- 15 March 2026
- Language
- EN