Memory, Photography, and Modernism: The “dead bodies and ruined houses” of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas

Article


Humm, M. 2003. Memory, Photography, and Modernism: The “dead bodies and ruined houses” of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas. Signs. 28 (2), pp. 645-663.
AuthorsHumm, M.
Abstract

In Three Guineas Woolf includes five photographs of her masculine world: the army, lawyers, professors and church leaders which Woolf 'resists' with unpublished photographs: the narrator's memories of Spanish Civil War photographs. Where the public photographs erase individuality, the absent photographs encourage an alternative and radical politics. In private life Woolf was an active photographer very conscious of the links between memory, subjectivity and photography. Utilising ideas of memory and the visual from a range of writers including Pierre Nora, the article argues that the narrator's political argument is created by means of her embodiment in relation to the absent, not published, photographs.

KeywordsVirginia Woolf; memory; photography; modernism; Spanish Civil War; Pierre Nora
JournalSigns
Journal citation28 (2), pp. 645-663
ISSN0097-9740
Year2003
Publisher's version
License
CC BY-ND
Web address (URL)http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175808
http://hdl.handle.net/10552/349
Publication dates
Print2003
Publication process dates
Deposited28 Oct 2009
Additional information

Citation:
Humm, M. (2003) ‘Memory, Photography, and Modernism: The “dead bodies and ruined houses” of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas’ Signs, 28 (2) 645-663.

Permalink -

https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/8692z

Download files


Publisher's version
  • 350
    total views
  • 487
    total downloads
  • 9
    views this month
  • 17
    downloads this month

Export as

Related outputs

Virginia Woolf and Visual Culture
Humm, M. 2010. Virginia Woolf and Visual Culture. in: Sellars, S. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, 2nd edn Cambridge Cambridge University Press. pp. 214-230
My Own Ghost Met Me: Woolf’s 1930s Photographs, Death and Freud’s Acropolis
Humm, M. 2010. My Own Ghost Met Me: Woolf’s 1930s Photographs, Death and Freud’s Acropolis. in: Potts, G, Shahriari, L (ed.) Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury: Volume 1: Aesthetic Theory and Literary Practice Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 86-103
Vanessa Bell's Photographs: Modernism, the Maternal and the Erotic
Humm, M. 2002. Vanessa Bell's Photographs: Modernism, the Maternal and the Erotic. in: Hansom, P (ed.) Literary Modernism and Photography Praeger. pp. 93-106
Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell: "the same pair of eyes, only different spectacles"
Humm, M. 2005. Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell: "the same pair of eyes, only different spectacles". in: Kukil, K (ed.) Woolf in the Real World: Selected Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Virginia Woolf Clemson University Digital Press. pp. 24-30
Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf and the Maternal
Humm, M. 2007. Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf and the Maternal. in: Giorgio, A and Waters, J (ed.) Women's Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 170-185
Memory and Photography in the Photo Albums of Virginia Woolf
Humm, M. 2005. Memory and Photography in the Photo Albums of Virginia Woolf. in: Fisher,, D and Mays, A (ed.) Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century, Cunningham Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 42-51
Beauty and Woolf
Humm, M. 2006. Beauty and Woolf. Feminist Theory. 7 (3), pp. 237-254.
"Memory Hole" or "Heterotopias"?: the Bloomsbury photographs
Humm, M. 2007. "Memory Hole" or "Heterotopias"?: the Bloomsbury photographs. in: Burrells, A, Ellis, S, Parsons, D and Simpson, K (ed.) Woolfian Boundaries: Selected Papers from the Sixteenth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf Clemson University Digital Press. pp. 150-156
Editing Virginia Woolf and the Arts: Woolf and the Royal Academy
Humm, M. 2009. Editing Virginia Woolf and the Arts: Woolf and the Royal Academy. in: McNees, E and Veglahn, S (ed.) Woolf Editing/Editing Woolf: Selected Papers from the Eighteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf Clemson, SC Clemson University Digital Press. pp. 154-159
Photography
Humm, M. 2006. Photography. in: Bradshaw, D. and Dettmar, K. (ed.) A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture Wiley Blackwell. pp. 278-283