Abstract
When Diana, Princess of Wales, died so tragically she brought the nation out into the streets to mourn her tragic loss. She made visible some of the changes that were gradually taking shape in post-traditional Britain with some intense resistance because it was a multicultural and multifaith society. In addition, people were mourning for Dodi Fayed, who had also died in the crash. A recognition of their new-found love added to the sense of tragedy and helped to dramatise responses. What was striking walking around Kensington Palace in the days before the funeral was the personal nature of so many of the messages. People behaved as if they had experienced a personal loss in their lives with the passing of Diana.
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Notes
For some discussion of the changing nature of British society as it moved towards being a multicultural society see, for instance, Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000)
Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Conviviality or Postcolonial Melancholy (London: Routledge, 2005)
Michael Keith, After Cosmopolitanism (London: Routledge, 2006)
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For some discussions about the nature of postmodernism see, for instance, Barry Smart, Posrmodernism (London: Routledge, 1992)
Scott Lasch and Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1994) and Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
For some discussions of reflexive modernisation see, for instance, Scott Lash et al., Reflexive Modernization; (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994)
Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
This is a theme that Axel Honneth explores in ‘Organised Self-Realisation, some Paradoxes of Individualisation’, European Journal of Social Theory, 7, 4, 463–78. For some grasp of the development of enterprise culture and the form of subjectivities it helps shape see also the discussions in R. Keat and N. Abercrombie, eds, Enterprise Culture (London: Routledge, 1991).
Ulrich Beck explores these concerns in ‘On the Mortality of Industrial Society’ in Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of Risk Society (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1995). This develops arguments initially presented in Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992).
An exploration of the ways that Bauman begins to think about shifts in his own thinking is given in Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester, Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001)
See also Bauman’s early formulation of some of these concerns in Alone Again: Ethics After Certainty (London: Demos, 1994).
An early indication of the impact of a profound generational shift was given in H. Wilkinson and G. Mulgan, Freedom’s Children: Work, Relationships and Politics for 18–34 Year Olds in Britain Today (London: Demos, 1995).
For some historical context for the struggles for homosexual rights and the development of notions of sexual citizenship see, for instance, Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain (London: Quartet Books, 1977) and his more recent Inventing Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995)
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Simone Weil develops this critique of expressive notions of personhood that have informed particular Marxist traditions in Oppression and Liberty (London: Routledge, 2001). It is a theme in the chapter on work that I wrote in Lawrence Blum and Victor J. Seidler, A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism (London: Routledge, 1991).
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Helpful discussions of the 17th-century scientific revolutions that help to appreciate the gendered context in which they took place are given in Brian Easlea, Science and Sexual Oppression: Patriachy’s Confrontation with Women and Nature (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981)
Caroline Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (London: Wildwood House, 1982).
Some interesting reflections upon the disdain for bodies and emotional lives and the ways they continue as a Christian inheritance within modernity are given in Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. For ways this has been reflected in the disdain for a Jewish tradition identified with the body and sexuality see Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
Victor J. Seidler, Jewish Philosophy and Western Culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).
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For some reflections upon the experiences of young Asian women from diverse backgrounds in Britain see, for instance, N. Puwar and P. Raghuram, eds, South Asian Women in the Diaspora (Oxford: Berg 2003)
N. Puwar, Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place (Oxford: Berg 2004).
See also A. Blunt and G. Rose, eds, Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies (New York: Guildford Press, 1994)
Saskia Sassen, Guests and Aliens (New York: New Press, 1999)
Nira Yuval Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage 1999)
Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003).
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© 2013 Victor Jeleniewski Seidler
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Seidler, V.J. (2013). Conclusion: Postmodern Identities, Citizenships and the Re-invention of Authority. In: Remembering Diana. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371903_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371903_12
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