Memetic Witnessing: A Transhistorical Analysis of Reconstruction Testimony and #SayHerName

This article examines the development of memetic witnessing, a vernacular strategy of repetition and remixing, in the testimony of Harriet Fernanders, a nineteenth-century woman called to testify before a congressional hearing about Ku Klux Klan violence in South Carolina during Reconstruction, and in the contemporary "#Say Her Name" social media campaign, which asks viewers to repeat the names of women killed by police violence. This article argues that memetic witnessing allows for important forms of identification and solidarity that refuse the persistent threat of erasure such subjects are vulnerable to through this important form of knowledge production.