Absent presence : mourning the Queen on Gibraltar National Day
Abstract
What does it mean to declare loyalty to the Crown? This article explores the politics of loyalty and the potency of monarchy’s set-apart quality. It does so from the particular vantage point of Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory which the Queen had not visited since 1954 as the British government sought to avoid reigniting tensions with Spain. Yet under the conditions of this absent presence, a particularly intense form of loyalty has emerged in Gibraltar’s articulation of their relationship with their Queen. Taking as my ethnographic foreground the cancellation of Gibraltar National Day events in the wake of the Queen’s death, I explore how the process of mourning demonstrates an intimacy which also enacts a specific political intentionality.
Citation
Irvine , R D G 2022 , ' Absent presence : mourning the Queen on Gibraltar National Day ' , Anthropology Today , vol. 38 , no. 6 , pp. 11-14 . https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12769
Publication
Anthropology Today
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0268-540XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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