‘I Have a Voice’: speech, silence and the rehabilitation of empire.

This article grapples with the performativity of speech as a crucial site through which empire brings into being that which it names. I offer a critique of reading (and rehabilitating) empire as a mild and benign force in conjunction with the popularity of the filmThe King’s Speech(2010) which, I ar...

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Publicado en:Postcolonial Studies Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 67 - 85
Autor principal: Shahani, Nishant
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Mar2015
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        Performative (Philosophy)
        Speech
        Politics in motion pictures
        Historiography
        King's Speech, The (Film)
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          Performative (Philosophy)
          Speech
          Politics in motion pictures
          Historiography
          King's Speech, The (Film)
      ab: This article grapples with the performativity of speech as a crucial site through which empire brings into being that which it names. I offer a critique of reading (and rehabilitating) empire as a mild and benign force in conjunction with the popularity of the filmThe King’s Speech(2010) which, I argue, attaches a humanized and redeemed face to the violence of empire. In my analysis, I suggest that a film that is ostensibly about the triumph of the speech-act could be read more productively as a text about the silence of empire. Drawing on queer and disability rights critiques of the politics of rehabilitation, I argue that in attempting to contain the stigma of stuttering, the film implicitly rehabilitates the politics of empire for a new millennium. I read the film in conjunction with certain strands of colonial historiography that are invested in recuperating the colonial encounter and refashioning it as a potentially egalitarian and mutually beneficial force, implicitly rejecting the insights of postcolonial critique.
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