Abstract
On Wednesday evening in early September 1998 we decided as a family to visit Kensington Palace. We had already been on Sunday evening, the day after the funeral of Diana but we had decided that we wanted to return. We were all surprised at the numbers of people who were leaving the platform at High Street Kensington progressing slowly, first through the station and then across the main road walking towards the entrance at Hyde Park. We had thought that given the numbers in London for the funeral things would have quietened down on the Sunday, but the crowds were immense. They were also very diverse in terms of age, gender, ‘race’ and ethnicities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For some discussion of the diverse religious influences to be found in these shrines around Kensington Palace and the ritualised forms of expression giving very different senses of how they could be interpreted see, for instance, J. Richards, S. Wilson and L. Woodhead, eds, Diana: The Making of a Media Saint (London: I.B. Taurus, 1999)
R. Richardson, ‘Disposing with Diana: Diana’s Death and the Funeral Culture’, in New Formations, 36, 21–33; B. McArthur, ed., Requiem: Diana, Princess of Wales 1961–1997 andMandy Merck, ed., After Diana: Irreverent Elegies (London: Verso, 1998).
For some discussion of the place of emotions in social life that helps open up different perspectives as well as critique prevailing forms of social and cultural theory that have tended to minimise the significance of emotional responses to experiences see, for example, Jill Bendelow and Simon Williams, eds, Emotions and Social Life (London: Routledge, 1988)
S. Mestrovic, Postemotional Society (London: Sage, 1997).
Different interpretations and responses to the widespread public mourning for Diana, which brought so many people onto the streets in unprecedented ways, are offered in T. Walter, ed., The Mourning for Diana (Oxford: Berg, 1999), which includes chapters by B. Jones, ‘Books of Condolence’, pp. 203–14 and J. Kitzinger, ‘The Moving Power of Moving Images: Television Constructions of Princess Diana’, pp 65–76
A. Kear and D. Steinberg, eds, Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief (London: Routledge, 1999), which includes the chapter by R. Johnson, ‘Exemplary Differences: Mourning (and not Mourning) a Princess’, pp. 15–39.
Foucault’s discussion of the nature of civilisation and unreason is to be found in Madness and Civilisation (London: Penguin Books, 1988). I have intended to make explicit connections to dominant European masculinities in Victor J. Seidler, Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language, and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1987) and in Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory (London: Routledge, 1994).
For some discussion upon the relationship of masculinities to Empire see, for instance, J. A. Mangan and J. Malvin, Masculinity and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987
Sven Lindstrom, Exterminate the Brutes (London: Granta Books, 2002).
For some discussion of the significance of compassion and the ways it has been rendered invisible within prevailing rationalist forms of social theory, see for instance, K. Tester, Compassion, Morality and the Media (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001).
Copyright information
© 2013 Victor Jeleniewski Seidler
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seidler, V.J. (2013). Memories, Myths, Icons and Images. In: Remembering Diana. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371903_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371903_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34016-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37190-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)