ABSTRACT
What remains uncertain is whether public memory can be fashioned publicly, by criminal trial or other means. Even if memory can (to considerable degree) be willfully created, must the fact of its fabrication be obscured from public view in order for such fashioning to be effective? Must prosecutorial decisions about the dramatic staging of a trial for administrative massacre be kept “backstage,” in Goffman’s terms, 1 never acknowledged in public, for fear of being charged with partisan “manipulation” or with breaching the judicial ethic of impartiality?
