Signs of Cleopatra

For two thousand years images of Cleopatra have been distorted by the fantasies of European imagination and cultures. Our view of Cleopatra is structured not by the existence of the real woman but by the historical and cultural influences governing the various readings of her life. Each influence bears the traces of specific struggles for power and meaning. Mary Hamer recovers those traces. Cleopatra is often associated with desire but she also represents a woman's power to act for her own fulfilment. "Signs of Cleopatra" is a set of Cleopatra puzzles, using the Bakhtinian argument that a contest of meanings based around a figure allow issues of the widest importance to be organized and earthed through it. Taking particular images of Cleopatra from history, classics, literary studies and art history the author explores the differences between these images, concentrating on the specific social and historical formations which inform each reading and questioning the processes of representation itself.