Queer Perspectives: Turning the Tables - Bird La Bird. 3/5/18

What a great talk!  Bird La Bird is a feisty, queer, performance artist of Irish Catholic descent. Bird digs beneath the surface of British working class gay heritage.  Described herself as challenging, queer femme feminist.  She was speaking about Thomas Carlyle, one of the founders of the National Portrait Gallery, and who is portrayed above the entrance to the NPG.

Somewhat fuzzy, image of Thomas Carlyle, taken in poor light after the talk.

Bird did an analysis of Thomas Carlyle - and it was not favourable.  She found much of what he did totally offensive - he instigated homophobic rules across empire.  H was an intellectual Victorian, Calvinist (who hated women) - yet there are 82 portraits of him in the NPG holdings.  Bird had been on line and found many quotes attributed to him in various racist, fascist, misogynistic, homophobic Twitter feeds and the like, all labelled as "motivational men quotes".    Bird was quite clear that generally Institutions do not make clear the racist (or other obnoxious) backgrounds of key figures (eg Enoch Powell).  Carlyle had called for a return to slavery in 1953, 20 years after its abolition (c1840) in the British Empire, referring to Quashee (this is a racial slur - meaning black Sunday's child).  Also had a poster Pumpkins or Potatoes.  This was questioning whether affluent migrants wanted to employ former slaves, or Irish and set slaves against starving Irish migrants from the potato famine.

Bird spoke about Margaret Gibb, aka Ann Hunt, who vandalised Thomas Carlyle's portrait at NPG.  subsequently arrested and convicted, sentenced to 6 months for damage to portrait.  But was she a vandal or campaigner?  Seen as criminal in police surveillance photo.

Gibb, in her suffrage campaigning, was multiply imprisoned, and was a hunger striker.  Gained a medal from the WSPC - Deeds not Words.  Was also a chess champion - so was a strategic thinker.

Margaret Gibb, courtesy of Museum of London

Bird also spoke about Frederick Douglass, a black Victorian anti-slavery campaigner.  She noted Dickens, Tennyson, Ruskin all supported Carlyle in his defence of a slave murderer, General Eyre, where nearly 1000 slaves died.  Additionally she had identified Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde had supported Carlyle in his views.

Bird stressed there is a need for institutions to give the full picture.  Dr Caroline Bressey has done a very good write up of Carlyle on the NPG website which describes him accurately as a learned, albeit racist, intellectual.  But this is buried deep in the website.  Not easy to find.

Good book - Catherine Hall.  White, Male, and Middle-class: Explorations in feminism and history.

Instititions (like NPG) are site of collective memory.  This needs to give a different narrative to the dominant perspective (ie white male perspective).  Get the people who are represented to write the label - because they will have the ability and right to describe their complexity.  Is this what I am covering when interviewing my cleaners.