Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition

ISBN-13: 9780230340329 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 234 str.

Heather Davis-Fisch

Opis

In 1845, John Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition disappeared. The expedition left a remarkable archive of performative remains that entice one to consider the tension between material remains and memory, to contemplate how affect influences historical narratives, and to reflect on how substitution and surrogation work alongside mourning and melancholia as responses to loss. This book proposes that performances generate critical insights into how those affected by the expedition's disappearance understood the losses they experienced and makes the broader argument that performance functions as a repository of cultural history and as an epistemology of loss.

Recenzje

"Davis-Fisch's book is . . . the most original and engaging work on the cultural impact of the mid-century Franklin fascination yet to appear - and, it's to be hoped, a harbinger of further such studies of the larger dramas of exploration as such, in all the regions of the world that the 'West' thought of as distant." - The Arctic Book Review

"The argument of Heather Davis-Fisch's book - that we might trace the 'remains' of a cultural event through performance in order both to evoke its circumstances and to argue for a relationship between performance and history, as well as performance and 'loss' more generally - is important, compelling, and interesting. Davis-Fisch makes her points clearly and delivers interesting close readings informed by recent criticism and theory." - Jennifer Hill, Fitzgerald Distinguished Professor of the Humanities , University of Nevada, Reno

Spis treści

Introduction: Jane Franklin's Dress: Archives and Affect  Disciplining Nostalgia in the Navy; or, Harlequin in the Arctic   'The Sly Fox': Reading Indigenous Presence   Going Native: 'Playing Inuit,' 'Becoming Savage,' and Acting Out Franklin  Aglooka's Ghost: Performing Embodied Memory  The Last Resource: Witnessing the Cannibal Scene   The Designated Mourner: Charles Dickens Stands in for Franklin   Conclusion: Franklin Remains 

O autorze

Heather Davis-Fisch is an instructor in English and Theatre at the University of Fraser Valley, Canada