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"Mourning Diana" revisits the remarkable series of public events that occurred across the world following the tragic death of Princess Diana, from the spontaneous public gatherings right after the news broke to the official funeral ceremonies. The book takes the Diana events as a case study for the examination of a number of key questions in contemporary culture and within contemporary cultural and performance studies.
The editors have brought together a distinguished group of international contributors whom:
*view the Diana events as a case study of wider cultural processes and questions
*discuss a range of interdisciplinary concerns informed by cultural studies, performance studies, gender, sexuality, and sociology
*provide a substantive theory of the power relations of mourning, social drama, iconicity and cultural narration
*explore how the boundaries of the mainstream seemed to shift in the wake of Diana events, and how the questions of institutional privilege, social dispossession and cultural power which Diana embodied were brought to the forefront in the global reaction to her death
In a context in which considerable dispute has taken place over the meanings and seriousness of the Diana events, the publication of this serious, reflective, and sober critique speaks to and re-addresses this controversy.
Contributors: Jean Duruz, Susanne Greenhalgh, Valerie Hey, Carol Johnson, Richard Johnson, Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher, Mica Nava, Arvind Rajagopal, William J. Spurlin, Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Diana Taylor, Jatinder Verma, Valerie Walkerdine.
List of contents
Preface: Mourning Diana and the Scholarly Ethic, Adrian Kear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg Ghost Writing, Adrian Kear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg Exemplary Differences: Mourning (and not mourning) a Princess, Richard Johnson Our Lady of Flowers: The ambiguous politics of Diana's Floral Revolution, Susan Greenhalgh Be(long)ing: New Labour, New Britain and the Dianaisation of Politics, Valerie Hey 'That which is taken from me is not mine':Rhetoric, Nation and the People's Property, Joe Kelleher The Crowd in the Age of Diana: Ordinary Inventiveness and the Popular Imagination, Valerie Walkerdine Diana and Race: Romance and the Reconfiguration of the Nation, Mica Nava Mourning Diana, Jatinder Verma Celebrity and the Politics of Charity: Memories of a Missionary Departed, Arvind Rajagopal Mourning at a Distance: Australians and the Death of a British Princess Jean Duruz and Carol Johnson I'd Rather be the Princess than the Queen! Mourning Diana as Gay Icon, William J.Spurlin Diana Between Two Deaths: Spectral Ethics and the Time of Mourning, Adrian Kear Downloading Grief: Minority Populations Mourn Diana, Diana Taylor
About the author
Adrian Kear is lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies at the Roehampton Institute. Deborah Lynn Steinberg is lecturer in Gender Relations at Warwick University.
Summary
Mourning Diana examines the events which followed the death of Diana as a series of cultural-political phenomena, examining the performance of grief and the involvement of the global media.
