ABSTRACT
In education, in legislation, in books ranging from the Bible to airline timetables, the textuality of the British Empire has written itself across the globe, to be internalized by its subjects. But such textuality is neither an objectified historical phenomenon ‘back there’ nor a univocal, uninterrupted monologic drone. Imperialism is a more pervasive phenomenon than its obvious geopolitical manifestations celebrated in movies of the Raj, or in royal tours to the colonies. As the power structures of the world realign, to construct possible power structures of possible worlds, and communications become on the one hand more popular and on the other more specialized, sophisticated and controlled, imperialism aspires to anonymity, and its textualities become increasingly subtle, amorphous, and rhizomic. This essay focuses on the deposition of ‘abject’ human remains as a marker or camouflage of the edge of Empire, to explore the nature and implications of textuality in two types of contemporary situation: a ‘media drama’ —the crash of an aeroplane while on a sightseeing trip to New Zealand’s Antarctic ‘dependency’ —and stage plays in which theatre’s richly polyphonic discourse enables the strategic exploration of the ironies of, and the impossible possibility of escaping from, the constructions of Empire.
