The Anatomy of Memory Politics: A Formalist Analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the Struggle over Britain’s 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 Frye—comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire—can 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 Britain’s 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 Britain’s 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

Language Proficiency and Migration: An Argument Against Testing

This paper aims at questioning the rationale for language testing in immigration policies. Although we consider knowledge of the host country’s language(s) useful and desirable for both the migrant and the host society, we argue that mandatory language testing cannot be justified. Our purpose is to offer justifications for rejecting language as a legitimate tool for controlling state borders and to regulate (access to) citizenship of a liberal democracy

The anti-nomadic bias of political theory

Over the last couple of decades, the conditions of life for nomadic peoples have been radically rethought (Devore & Lee, 1999). Contrary to what we once were told, the lives of hunters, gatherers and pastoralists are generally not “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes, 1651, i:13, p. 84). Rather, barring environmental calamities, their lives are sociable, rich, pleasant, sophisticated and long. Gatherers are not desperately digging for roots and hunters are not chasing wild geese. Instead hunters and gatherers have traditionally lived in abundant environments where looking for food is similar to looking for something to eat in a refrigerator (Turnbull, 1984, pp. 96–108). Their days can be spent on leisurely activities, and when food is required, they simply go and get it...2-s2.0-8508846913

Tragedy, genealogy and theories of International Relations

This article interrogates the role of tragedy within the work of International Relations theorists including Michael Dillon, Mervyn Frost, Richard Ned Lebow and Hans Morgenthau. It argues that a tragic sensibility is a constituent part of much thinking about politics and the international, and asks what the reasons for this preoccupation might be. Noting that a number of diverse theoretical appeals to tragedy in International Relations invoke analytically similar understandings of tragic-political subjectivity, the article problematises these by building on Michel Foucault’s intermittent concern with the genre in his Collège de France lecture series. It proposes that a genealogical consideration of tragedy enables an alertness to its political associations and implications that asks questions of the way in which it is commonly conceived within the discipline. The article concludes by suggesting that International Relations theorists seeking to invoke tragedy must think carefully about the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political claims associated with such a move