Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Crowds, Events, Enaction: Liminal Politics at the Chattri Memorial

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Liminality and Critical Event Studies

  • 328 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter analyses how memorialising and heritage-making by an affective crowd asserted a postcolonial politics. The Chattri Memorial is a remembrance space situated near Brighton, UK, built in 1921, to mark Indian soldiers who fought during the First World War. It explores how a heterogeneous community of local veterans, Indian organisations, and onlookers from mixed origins performed a horizontal politics through an experienced event. It engages participants’ affective event-making as conscious ‘past-presencing’ (Macdonald, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today, Routledge, London, 2013), and analyses how their annual acts of presencing in this space constitutes the enaction of citizenship (Isin, in: Isin & Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship, Zed Books, London, 2008). The communal rite of memorialising was a political event not only for witnessing, belonging, and gaining recognition, but also for making conscious interventions over the racialising discourses that are a fact of life for participants.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Arendt, H. (1958 [1989]). The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashley, S. (2014). Re-telling, re-cognition, re-stitution: Sikh heritagization in Canada. Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, 11(2), 39–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashley, S. (2016). Acts of heritage, acts of value: Memorializing at the Chattri Indian Memorial, UK. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22(7), 554–567.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashworth, G. J. (2008, May 6–10). Heritage: Definitions, delusions and dissonances. Keynote Address, Heritage 2008: World Heritage and Sustainable Development Conference. Greenlines Institute, Portugal.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson, E. (2002). The responsible anarchist: Postmodernism and social change. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1), 73–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Badiou, A. (2007). The event in Deleuze. Parrhesia, 2, 37–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (2015). Patterns of commoning. Amherst, MA: Off Common Books/Levellers Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N. (2005). Chomsky on anarchism. Oakland: AK Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conway, J. M. (2013). Praxis and politics: Knowledge production in social movements. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cornwall, A., & Coelho, V. (2007). Spaces for change? The politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dayan, D. (2005). Paying attention to attention: Audiences, publics, thresholds and genealogies. Journal of Media Practice, 6(1), 9–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dean, J. (2015). Crowds and party. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esteva, G. (2014). Commoning in the new society. Community Development Journal, 49(1), i144–i159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, N. (2015). Agency in a zoo: The Occupy Movement’s strategic expansion to art institutions. Field, 2(Winter), 15–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Getz, D. (2007). Event studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Golańska, D. (2015). Affective spaces, sensuous engagements: In quest of a synaesthetic approach to ‘dark memorials’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8), 773–790.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical approaches. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. C. (2001). Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(4), 319–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horvath, A., Thomassen, B., & Wydra, H. (2015). Liminality and the search for boundaries. In A. Horvath, B. Thomassen, & H. Wydra (Eds.), Breaking boundaries: Varieties of liminality (pp. 1–8). New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isin, E. F. (2008). Theorising acts of citizenship. In E. F. Isin & G. Nielsen (Eds.), Acts of citizenship (pp. 15–43). London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, E., & Dayan, D. (2003). The audience is a crowd, the crowd is a public. In E. Katz, et al. (Eds.), Canonic texts in media research (pp. 121–136). Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knudsen, B. T., & Andersen, C. (2019). Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(3), 1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kropotkin, P. (2008 [1902]). Mutual aid: A factor in evolution. Charleston: Forgotten.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lasky, J. (2011). Indigenism, anarchism, feminism: An emerging framework for exploring post-imperial futures. Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action. Accessed 13 July at https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/affinities/issue/view/572.

  • Le Bon, G. (1897 [2009]). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. Southampton, UK: Sparkling Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta manifesto: Liberties and commons for all. Los Angeles, USA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Littler, J., & Naidoo, R. (2005). The politics of heritage, the legacies of race. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, B. (2014). Whose cake is it anyway? In L. Gouriévidis (Ed.), Museums and migration: History, memory and politics (pp. 67–80). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire. Representations, 26(Spring), 7–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Owens, T. (2013). Digital cultural heritage and the crowd. Curator: The Museum Journal, 56(1), 121–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, G. (2015). Events in the network society: The role of pulsar and iterative events. Event Management, 19(4), 553–566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sánchez-Carretero, C. (2013). Significance and social value of cultural heritage: Analyzing the fractures of heritage. In M. A. Rogerio-Candelera & M. Lazzari (Eds.), Science and technology for the conservation of cultural heritage (pp. 387–392). London: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sewell, W. H. (2005). Logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Simon, R. I. (2014). A pedagogy of witnessing: Curatorial practice and the pursuit of social justice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, R. I., & Ashley, S. (2010). Heritage and practices of public formation. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(4–5), 247–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Slaby, J., & Röttger-Rössler, B. (2018). Introduction. In B. Röttger-Rössler & J. Slaby (Eds.), Affect in relation: Families, places, technologies (pp. 1–28). Oxford: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Springer, S. (2014). Why a radical geography must be anarchist. Dialogues in Human Geography, 4(3), 249–270.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stagoll, C. (2010). Event. In A. Parr (Ed.), The Deleuze dictionary (Rev. ed., pp. 89–91). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology. Rice Institute-Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Public Culture, 14(1), 49–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. (1977). Structures of feeling. Marxism and Literature, 1, 128–135.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Susan L. T. Ashley

Authors
  1. Susan L. T. Ashley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susan L. T. Ashley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Ian R. Lamond

  2. School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Jonathan Moss

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ashley, S.L.T. (2020). Crowds, Events, Enaction: Liminal Politics at the Chattri Memorial. In: Lamond, I., Moss, J. (eds) Liminality and Critical Event Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40256-3_14

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation