This study addresses a tension in contemporary studies of public memory between ideology criticism and postmodern critique. Both strategies of reading public memory rely on a representational logic derived from the assumption that the source for comparison of a memory text occurs in a more fundamental text or event. Drawing heavily from Michel Foucault, the study proposes an alternative to a representational reading strategy based on the concepts of regularity, similitude, articulation, and cultural formation. The reading of Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Galveston County Vietnam Memorial serves as an example of a non-representational regularity enabled by the cultural formation of pastoral power.