The Absent Presence of Paul Robeson in Wales: Appropriation and Philosophical Disconnects in the Memorial Landscape

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Alan Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Memorial Landscape ◽  
Absent Presence

Drawing as a Creative Approach to Researching Extant Garments: A Case Study Involving John Ruskin's Clothing

Costume ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-221
Author(s):  
Ingrid Mida ◽  
Sarah Casey
Keyword(s):  
Research Tool ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
Dress History ◽  
Absent Presence

Reading the clues embedded in extant clothing demands both imagination and patience since the subtle marks of wear, use and alteration may only become evident with extended observation and reflection. During the course of a project undertaken in conjunction with the bicentenary celebrations of John Ruskin's birth culminating in the exhibition of Sarah Casey's drawings in Ruskin's Good Looking! (8 February–7 April 2019), the authors studied the garments of John Ruskin at Brantwood, his former home in the Lake District. The life-sized drawings of these garments produced by Casey mapped the absent presence of the former wearer, allowed visitors the opportunity to better see and reflect on Ruskin's clothing, and also revealed the hidden histories of Ruskin's garments. Drawing, the making of marks with meaning, is not an obvious research tool in dress history and curatorial practice but, as this case study shows, can expose subtle details and reveal new insights.

‘Where is she?’ Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Gildersleeve
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Elizabeth Bowen ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
Literary Influence ◽  
The One ◽  
Absent Presence

This chapter examines the absent presence of Katherine Mansfield in Elizabeth Bowen’s personal and fictional writing to demonstrate how loss, desire and mourning might constitute a particularly female mode of literary influence. It explores Bowen’s ambivalent perceptions of Mansfield as a literary influence throughout her career, on the one hand protesting against her influence and defending her own originality, and on the other recognising her innovation and mourning her as a ‘lost contemporary’. Gildersleeve argues that the literary relationship between Bowen and Mansfield eludes both the Bloomian model of destroying the predecessor and the model of matrilineal heritage preferred by feminist literary critics. Instead, influence between Mansfield and Bowen registers as a ‘desire for kinship, and resentment that this bond does not exist’.

Krokodil’s Hollow Center: The Performance of Affirmation

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-190
Author(s):  
John Etty
Keyword(s):  
Political Leaders ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
Visual Discourse ◽  
Space Race ◽  
Graphic Construction ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
Absent Presence ◽  
Positive Character ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Character Types

This chapter investigates the reasons for, and implications of, the apparent absence in Krokodil's affirmative cartoons of positive character types, including Soviet political leaders. Without overstating their significance, it traces their "absent presence" by considering how, even when Soviet leaders were physically absent, their presence was still implied. Consequently, since images of those at the centre were so rare, we may describe Krokodil's affirmation of Soviet ideology visual discourse, de-centered. A performative reading of Krokodil's cartoons about ordinary citizens enables us to interpret the journal's own performance of its own acts of engagement with all the dominant popular-official themes of the Thaw era, notably the Space Race. By analyzing the graphic construction of cartoons affirming Soviet ideology from the post-Stalin period, we may understand more fully the magazine's performances of memory and critiquing present and past achievements.

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