The Fine Texture of Enactment: Iconicity as Empowerment in Angelina Grimké's Pennsylvania Hall Address

Abstract

This essay describes a theory of enactment and its specialized form, iconicity. Whereas enactment involves rhetors serving as living proof of the claims they make, iconicity occurs in the details of a message's texture, when the text enacts and reinforces its own meaning. I analyze passages from Angelina Grimké's Pennsylvania Hall Address to demonstrate how iconicity works to acknowledge, dramatize, and critique oppression, and simultaneously to empower the oppressed.