Guest Editors: Jeremy Gilbert, David Glover, Cora Kaplan, Jenny Bourne Taylor and Wendy Wheeler
What
was it about the life and death of Princess Diana that made it resonate
in such an extraordinary way across the boundaries of age, class, race,
gender and politics that fracture contemporary social life? This special
issue of new formations looks at the cultural impact of Diana's death, and
at the lessons it offers about the place of celebrity, loss and mourning,
authority and legitimacy in popular consciousness, particularly when viewed
against the political horizon of new Labour's 1997 electoral victory.
The contributors look at the complex circulation of emotion and the politics of affect; the shifts in the cultural meaning of public funerals; the implications of Diana's death for the position of the monarchy within the British constitution; the relationship between the new media publics and media events; and at the contradictory feminisation of modern politics. They argue for the need to move beyond the false alternatives of cynicism and eulogy in order to understand the wider significance of that remarkable phenomenon: 'the people's princess.'
Contents and Contributors:
Jeremy Gilbert, David Glover, Cora Kaplan, Jenny Bourne
Taylor, Wendy Wheeler Editorial
Jacqueline Rose The Cult of Celebrity
Ruth Richardson Disposing with Diana: Diana's Death and the Funeral
Culture Carol Watts Unworkable Feeling: Diana, Death and Feminisation
Anthony Barnett and Jenny Bourne Taylor Diana and the Constitution:
A Conversation
Mark Gibson The Temporality of Democracy: The Long Revolution and
Diana, Princess of Wales
Nick Couldry Remembering Diana: The Geography of Celebrity and the
Politics of Lack
Heather Nunn Violence and the Sacred: The Iron Lady, the Princess
and the People's PM
Lisa Blackman An Extraordinary Life: The Legacy of an Ambivalence
Clare Birchall Alt.Conspiracy.Princess-Diana: The Conspiracy of Discourse
Jude Davies Princess: Diana, Feminity and the Royal