Genealogies of Difference

Abstract

Chapter 1 narrated how Roman design, in the form of Italian neoclassicism, together with other Continental trends, translated into a British idiom, attached always to the open flame and more recently, to the ‘garniture’ on the mantelshelf. In this chapter, two different genealogies of the mantelpiece, in China and the US, offer reflections upon the different ways of ‘history-making’ in Part I (to view images and websites relating to the Chapter, see Hurdley 2012). It explores how the absence of mantelpiece culture in China, and the careful preservation of New England fireplace practices, dig deeper at the foundations of home and identity – in the sense of homeland, or nation. I chose China as a country which until recently had very little cultural exchange with Britain, and New England precisely because it was an early colonial territory. I was also taken by the serendipitous discovery that a complete and exactingly researched traditional Chinese house now has its home in this US state. By looking at other countries, at how the ‘white middle-class Anglophone identities’ (Savage et al. 2010) have fared in colonialising domestic architecture, we can understand how the ‘universal particular’ makes its world everywhere (Savage 2003).

Let’s face it, we’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something.

(Butler 2004a: 20)