Building Connections, Building Obstacles: The Material Rhetorics of Connection and Disconnection at two US Border Parks

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes and compares parks at each of the two US borders—Peace Arch Park at the US-Canada border and Friendship Park at the US-Mexico border. I argue that the material elements in each park actively construct a specific kind of border which seems to be working against the binational collaboration they were meant to represent, and that these elements perpetuate the unfair treatment of visitors at the southern park. To demonstrate this, I connect border rhetoric, material in situ rhetoric, and rhetorical field methods. In the first chapter I analyze the material, embodied, and ephemeral rhetoric of the parks to see how each of the borders enhance a binational togetherness/separation tension. In the second chapter, I use the concept of wild rhetoric and deep ambivalence, to analyze how borders in relation to nonhumans create new obstacles for communities trying to collaborate to solve urgent problems such as environmental crises. Finally, in the third chapter I introduce the concepts of re-placing and pre-placing as tactics of rhetorical cartography, to analyze how visitors at each park responded to the access restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021.