- María Isabel Romero-Ruiz: “The Empire’s Follies and Julia Margaret Cameron as Ethnographer in David Rocklin’s The Luminist (2011): Contesting the Civilising Mission”
Description of the activity.
David Rocklin’s The Luminist (2011) is a neo-Victorian biofiction published about the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron during her time in the crown colony of Ceylon. In the novel we find a peculiar connection between the protagonist Catherine Colebrook and her Indian servant Eligius Shourie, subverting the relationship mistress-native servant. The so-called British civilising mission and the role of Empire are questioned in the text. At the same time, photography as an incipient form of art becomes the means to discuss gender roles and sexual mores, not only in the colonies but also in the metropolis. I will focus my discussion on the way in which the narrative deals with the follies of Empire and the role of Cameron as an ethnographer, making the representation of the “colonised other” the object of the coloniser’s gaze. Rocklin’s aim is to question the colonial past and its reminiscences in our postcolonial present.