Political and Sexual Deviance and Images of Martyrdom in Modern Britain

本研究的主题是殉教形象在现代英国卷入政治、宗教和文化纠纷的过程中成为高度争议的方式。那些故意接受痛苦的人可以被理解为英雄，精神不稳定，或者是变态。这个项目关注的是这类争议的两个领域。第一部分是通过考察殉难和恐怖主义的视觉意象和文本话语之间的相互关系来探讨殉难和政治颠覆之间的联系。其次，殉道的形象，尤其是那些来自罗马天主教的形象，帮助塑造了性异见的各个方面，比如19世纪末对同性欲望的文化形成。这项研究的主要目的是将历史、艺术史和宗教研究领域的学术研究联系在一起，并对19世纪的文化形态进行跨学科研究，但要注意长期的历史趋势和发展，直到今天。这项研究是我作为唯一研究员于2008年在伦敦大学伯克贝克分校开展的一个项目的高潮。这是我之前的研究项目的一个发展，该项目是在19世纪中期对盎格鲁天主教物质文化作为道德颠覆性偶像崇拜的有争议的接受，这种接受显示出新教徒对政治背叛和性颠覆之间联系的强烈恐惧。本项目建立在这样的理解之上，通过这样做，认为从政治到文化史、艺术史和宗教研究等一系列学科的学者都可以从强调政治、宗教和文化形态之间相互作用的工作中受益。本研究项目旨在通过对颠覆类型进行并置研究，以突出颠覆类型（如异端、背叛、恐怖主义和变态）的传统分类之外的思考所提供的关键机会。

The subject of this research is the way in which images of martyrdom became highly controversial in modern Britain through the process of their becoming enmeshed in political, religious and cultural disputes. Those who deliberately embraced suffering could be understood as heroes, as mentally unstable, or as perverts. This project focuses on two areas of such controversies. The first is the connections between martyrdom and political subversion through an examination of the interrelations between visual imagery and textual discourses of martyrdom and terrorism. The second is the way in which images of martyrdom, notably those derived from Roman Catholicism, helped to shape aspects of sexual dissidence such as the cultural formation of same-sex desire at the end of the nineteenth century. The key aims of this research are to connect together areas of scholarship carried out by those in history, art history and religious studies and to produce an interdisciplinary study of cultural formations which focus on the nineteenth century, but which pay heed to long-term historical trends and developments through to the present day.This research is the culmination of a project carried out by myself as sole researcher which was begun at Birkbeck, University of London in 2008. It is a development from my previous research project into the controversial reception of Anglo-Catholic material culture as morally subversive idolatry during the mid-nineteenth century, a reception which showed strong Protestant fears of links between political treachery and sexual subversion. This project builds on such understandings and, by so doing, argues that academics in a range of disciplines from political to cultural history, art history and religious studies can benefit from the development of work which highlights the interactions between political, religious and cultural formations. This research project aims to highlight key opportunities provided by thinking beyond conventional classifications of types of subversion such as heresy, treachery, terrorism and perversion by examining them in juxtaposition.