4 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Politics, Portraiture and Power: Reassessing the Public Image of William Ewart Gladstone
The Anatomy of Memory Politics: A Formalist Analysis of Tate Britainâs âArtist and Empireâ and the Struggle over Britainâs Imperial Past
In this paper, I propose a new approach for understanding the meaning of memory politics, which draws upon the archetypal literary criticism of Northrop Frye. I suggest that the four archetypes elaborated by Fryeâcomedy, romance, tragedy, and satireâcan be used as a heuristic device for interpreting the contested historical narratives that are associated with the politics of memory. I illustrate this approach through a case-study of Artists and Empire: Facing Britainâs Imperial Past, an exhibition held at Tate Britain in 2016, amidst increasing contestation over the meaning of the British Empire. In sum, I find that the exhibit narrated Britainâs imperial past as a comedy, in which a key theme was the progressive cultural mixing of the British and the people they colonized. To conclude, I discuss the implications of such a narrative for constructing an inclusive, postcolonial British identity. As an alternative, I draw on Aristotle to suggest that a tragic narrative would have been more propitious