Embodiment as a Technique of Protest Memory

Abstract

This chapter explores how suffragette legacies are carried out of the realm of history books and archives into physical happenings, forcing new arrangements and connective memories to evolve. ‘Embodiment as a Technique of Protest Memory’ analyses a cycle of high-profile protests mobilised around the global media event of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, including dramatisations of the women’s suffrage struggle within the opening ceremony itself and the UK Feminista Lobby on Parliament. This chapter also examines how activists and artists negotiate and regulate the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ borders of an intersectional suffragette memory, with regard to transnational histories of imperialism and resistance.