 |
 |
At 05:06 26/06/01 +1000, you wrote: >Hello there Garry > > What got me thinking was your discussion of Harold Holt's bow. Very >interesting! Raises all sorts of questions concerning the 'performativity' >involved. What is the status of a photographic image gesture, in relation >to the historical event to which it is related/articulated. By reading the >bent body of Holt as a bow, and not say a doubling over or a ducking of the >head and so forth, aren't we choosing one possibility out of many? This >suggests that the site of any reading is always shot through with a >multiplicity of potentials, which need to be described or mapped. The >'decisive moment' then is not a matter of revealing the truth of an event, >but of setting it off on another path. > >Warwick Hi Warwick, I suppose he was not bowing, though God knows every time I see the film of Menzies* with the Queen and hear that awful speech of his about 'I had but just to see her passing by and Oh I love her till I die', I think anything is possible with Australian Prime Ministers when they are in the company of their "betters". Nevertheless I doubt very much if Holt was bowing. But there are other aspects of the photograph which betoken subservience. In any case the truth of it all was that his bending over could be read as a bow because of the nature of the underlying relationship between the two leaders/nations. It is as if we had a sudden glimpse into the ontological depths that Bhaskar is always insisting on. That means there are limits to the reading of the "bow". It is decisive because it gives us access to the ontological. regards Gary * Note for non-Aussies. Sir Robert Menzies was Australia's longest serving Prime Minister. An ardent Royalist and vicious anti-communist, he began Australia's disastrous involvement in ?vietnam