ABSTRACT
Like myriad re-words (repair, revert, renew, renaissance, reform), restoration implies going back to an earlier condition, often the pristine original. The previous is held better-healthier, safer, purer, truer, more enduring, beautiful, or authentic-than what now exists. Whether with lost or stolen property, damaged paintings, deteriorated health, reputations damaged by accusation or slander, security from danger, or undermined trust and relationships, the aim is “retrieval of an original favored condition,” a status quo ante.3 As re-member and re-concile suggest, the purpose is essentially therapeutic: to recoup physical health, to redress a grievance, to mend social wounds. Restoration rebinds what has been dis-membered or sundered by dis-cord.4 To restore is to make whole again, in plain defi ance of “All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men [who] couldn’t put Humpty together again.” “One can no more restore an area of natural beauty-or a painting . . . —to its original state than one can turn women into the little girls they once were.”5 The futility of such efforts made restoration a byword, in English Restoration comedy, for transgressive farce.6
