The past is political is personal is political. It offers a wide range of resources for different political purposes: slogans, battle-cries, values and ideals, costumes, exemplary figures and actions, a stand-point from which the present can be viewed and held to account. Of course all such analogies and appropriations drastically simplify the complexity of the actual past, and even of later understanding of it – that’s how they’re able to operate, by emphasising resemblances and erasing differences. But this process is never wholly under the control of the one making a connection between past and present; the awkward bits of the past that get smoothed over or whitewashed for the purposes of making the comparison plausible have an awkward habit of re-emerging regardless…
Posts Tagged ‘Frederick the Great’
The Go-Between
Posted in Musings, tagged classical reception, Cleopatra, Frederick the Great, Friedrich III of Bayreuth, politics, Semiramis, Wilhelmine of Bayreuth on August 29, 2018| 4 Comments »
Sphinx 