On September 8, 2022, after more than 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II passed away. The responses among the public, media, and state institutions to the news were varied, with competing views on the role of the monarchy and the legacy of the queen. The questions this article seeks to answer are (1) how the monarch’s death introduced a fissure into the United Kingdom’s autobiographical narrative and (2) how exactly this moment led on the one hand to efforts to reaffirm the dominant UK autobiographical narrative and on the other to efforts to contest this narrative. In framing this analysis using Gestalt psychology, we theorize the role of perception in subjects’ experience of a fissure as well as their subsequent attempts to manage the ensuing anxieties. We show how perception enables and guides avenues for narrative contestation as well as conservative attempts to (re)establish the predominant autobiographical narrative by exploring how the government and the royal family sought to create a sense of continuity and transfer royal authority onto the next generation while activists attempted to subvert this established narrative to problematize the country’s (post)colonial history and societal inequalities.

中文翻译：

---

保持冷静并继续前进？《王冠灭亡后的裂缝、感知和叙事之争》


2022 年 9 月 8 日，在位 70 多年后，英国女王伊丽莎白二世去世。公众、媒体和国家机构对这一消息的反应各不相同，对君主制的作用和女王的遗产存在着相互矛盾的看法。本文试图回答的问题是 （1） 君主之死如何给英国的自传体叙事带来裂痕，以及 （2） 这一刻究竟如何一方面导致重申英国占主导地位的自传体叙事的努力，另一方面导致对这种叙事提出异议的努力。在使用格式塔心理学构建此分析时，我们将感知在受试者的裂痕体验以及他们随后管理随之而来的焦虑的尝试中的作用进行了理论化。我们通过探索政府和王室如何寻求创造连续感并将王权转移给下一代，同时活动家试图颠覆这种既定的叙事，使该国的（后）殖民历史和社会不平等问题化，展示了感知如何促成和引导叙事争论的途径，以及保守派试图（重新）建立占主导地位的自传式叙事。