Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Jane Austen: behind the scenes at the museum
Lashings of media hype for two London exhibitions to do with terracotta and gold, hardly any for the one concerned with sugar. But then remembering and the transmission of historical knowledge, though ostensibly neutral and objective, have always been very selective and politicized activities. British remembering has always been very good at blanking out. Take this plaque to a very fine gentleman:
Nothing to say that this man was among the vilest specimens of humanity, namely a slave trader. Which is why, since his statue is adjacent to the Docklands Museum, they have covered him up.
The exhibition is well worth a visit, and William Wilberforce is, as far as the Sharp Side is concerned, correctly assessed. There’s interesting material on the abolitionist movement. The instruments of punishment used on slaves have a Third Reich resonance. The contrast between these instruments and period saucers and tea cups is a striking one. Polite society consumed tea, coffee and sugar, oblivious or indifferent to the atrocity involved in delivering those commodities.
Cut to Mansfield Park. Edward Said changed forever the way the novel is read by interrogating the meaning of Sir Thomas Bertram’s absences in Antigua. Or as he put it in this classic work of criticism, ‘interpreting Jane Austen depends on who does the interpreting, when it is done, and no less important, from where it is done.’ Critics, of course, rarely question the foundations of their cultural judgements. For Said, Mansfield Park ‘opens up a broad expanse of domestic imperialist culture’. It is complicit in it, yet not entirely unaware of the material foundations of its moral transactions in ‘the slave trade, sugar, and the colonial planter class’.
In a fascinating and historically detailed essay, Gregson Davis argues that the references to Antigua in Mansfield Park possess personal family significance for Jane Austen and involve a subtle moral critique of the British landed gentry in terms of their presumed allegiance to the institution of slavery.
Nothing to say that this man was among the vilest specimens of humanity, namely a slave trader. Which is why, since his statue is adjacent to the Docklands Museum, they have covered him up.
The exhibition is well worth a visit, and William Wilberforce is, as far as the Sharp Side is concerned, correctly assessed. There’s interesting material on the abolitionist movement. The instruments of punishment used on slaves have a Third Reich resonance. The contrast between these instruments and period saucers and tea cups is a striking one. Polite society consumed tea, coffee and sugar, oblivious or indifferent to the atrocity involved in delivering those commodities.
Cut to Mansfield Park. Edward Said changed forever the way the novel is read by interrogating the meaning of Sir Thomas Bertram’s absences in Antigua. Or as he put it in this classic work of criticism, ‘interpreting Jane Austen depends on who does the interpreting, when it is done, and no less important, from where it is done.’ Critics, of course, rarely question the foundations of their cultural judgements. For Said, Mansfield Park ‘opens up a broad expanse of domestic imperialist culture’. It is complicit in it, yet not entirely unaware of the material foundations of its moral transactions in ‘the slave trade, sugar, and the colonial planter class’.
In a fascinating and historically detailed essay, Gregson Davis argues that the references to Antigua in Mansfield Park possess personal family significance for Jane Austen and involve a subtle moral critique of the British landed gentry in terms of their presumed allegiance to the institution of slavery.
# posted by Ellis : 9:29 AM
