Abstract
In examining the rhetorical power of memoir, this course takes up its role in the public
sphere, disavowing too-easy but frequently articulated characterizations of memoir as
narcissistic, insufficiently politicized, and/or inappropriately relying on ethos as a form of
persuasion. A recent oft-cited charge is that memoir opens itself up to questions about
“authenticity” and “reliability,” precisely at a moment when too many truth-claims in the
public sphere have little or no basis in actuality. While recognizing the value behind these
critiques, one can nevertheless argue for the role of memoir in shaping public
argumentation and engagement despite the inherent precarity and unreliability associated
with such an enterprise. Memoir’s presupposition of and reliance upon an implied and
articulated subjectivity and its employment of situated self-reflection, necessarily set in
historical, cultural and political contexts, make it a particularly useful genre when
analyzing the rhetoricity of contested narratives. There is perhaps no site more associated
with competing truth claims and contested narratives than a land termed alternately
“Eastern” and “Western,” “Asiatic” and “European,” “sacred” and “profane,” a “start-up
nation” of future and promise and a land mired hopelessly in a past of misdeeds and
crimes as yet unaccounted for, a land whose various names themselves represent conflict
and contestation: Israel/Palestine/ “the Holy Land.” We shall use memoirs from this real
and imagined homeland as a site for analyzing the persuasive power of memoir, taking
into consideration its appeal to both affect and intellect.