Fear of Retribution

This article begins with a personal account of Anna Mendelssohn and her work, recalled against the backdrop of student demonstrations in Cambridge and elsewhere across the UK in 2010-11. Using an idea drawn from the art historian Lisa Tickner (via the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott), it tries to take on the challenge of writing ‘good-enough history’. Through a reading of the poem ‘from. Implacable Art’, I consider Mendelssohn’s own involvement with student activism at Essex University in 1968. I conclude by exploring the limitations of Winnicott’s work, citing the work of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries, Juliet Mitchell and Denise Riley. What kind of approach does Mendelssohn’s work invite? What kind of approach does it disqualify? These are the questions my essay explores.