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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

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The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

Where do anthropology and archaeology meet? Do the study of humankind and the research of its material culture share a common approach? On what presuppositions do the disciplines rely? Where can the similarity of their methods be encountered? How did their conventions shape twentieth-century perspectives on the geographically and historically remote?   Both disciplines are born of a concept of distance which, at the same time as it establishes a limit for what they can comprehend, also assures that there is always enough space for a detached, unengaged, analytic gaze towards an other that exists in a distant past or distant place Such assumed detachment is fundamental to transforming fieldwork into theoretical analysis In order for such processes to take place, it’s necessary to find ways to reduce the whole into manageable samples Images, sounds, materials, notes are gathered and arranged in a single and unified physical area where they can be manipulated, enlarged, repeated, fragmented, combined: a table The table, this means of control and abstraction, might be the place where anthropology and archaeology meet Seated at the same table, professionals from both disciplines arrange the pieces in front of them as if they were playing a complex game whose rules have been defined over time   Francis Upritchard’s Traveller’s collection (2003) is a table with three shelves made of wood and marble, a depository and a display of objects of different natures, provenances, sizes, functions and shapes These colourful objects are carefully arranged: most of the smaller ones stand vertically while the larger items lie horizontally across the shelves This cabinet of curiosities is affiliated to the Renaissance-era Kunstkabinett, an encyclopaedic arrangement of objects without distinct disciplinary boundaries These pieces of furniture were often presented in chambers called Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer, in which objects relating to diverse aspects of biology, natural history, conchology, ethnography and archaeology, occultism, artistic expression, and geology were combined With their exuberant presentation of a variety of different items, the cabinets became a symbol of erudition and wealth, attesting to the elevated status of their owner while anticipating the space and function of

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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fiction

May 2012

Reflux

José Saramago

TR. Giovanni Pontiero

fiction

May 2012

First of all, since everything must have a beginning, even if that beginning is the final point from which...

feature

April 2017

The White Review Short Story Prize 2017 Shortlist (US & Canada)

feature

April 2017

click on the title to read the story   1,040 MPH by Alexander Slotnick   Abu One-Eye by Rav...

feature

July 2015

Talk Into My Bullet Hole

Rose McLaren

feature

July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for...

 

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