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

by Heather Davis-Fisch

Overview

In 1845, John Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition disappeared. The expedition left an archive of performative remains that entice one to consider the tension between material remains and memory and reflect on how substitution and surrogation work alongside mourning and melancholia as responses to loss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230340329
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	08/16/2012
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History
Edition description:	2012
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

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

Editorial Reviews

"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

From the Publisher