Scarcity in Visual Memory: Creating a Mural of Sylvia Pankhurst

Abstract

This chapter looks at the “premediation” (Erll & Rigney, 2009) of a mural of the early 20th-century activist Sylvia Pankhurst and considers a number of photographs that it remediates, asking the question: How did these images end up here? The chapter follows the images in relation to broader characteristics of Pankhurst’s remembrance, exploring the long and often complicated pathways they take to become carriers of cultural memory. This exploration reveals the many different forms of political or aesthetic attachment behind the mural, which themselves are shaped by institutional, financial, or technological constraints and possibilities, and demonstrates that even in a culture of “post-scarcity” (Hoskins, 2018) and supposed imagistic abundance the visual memory of activism is still governed by scarcity.