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

by Davis-Fisch, Heather

• ISBN13: 9780230340329
• ISBN10: 0230340326
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-04
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Heather Davis-Fisch is cross-appointed faculty in the English and Theatre Departments at the University of the Fraser Valley (British Columbia). Her work has appeared in Performing Arts Resources and Theatre Research in Canada.

Table of Contents

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