Commemorating No-bodies – Christopher Columbus and the Violence of Social-forgetting

Abstract

The Columbus statue in Barcelona is visited by millions of tourists each year and is one of the most well-known memorials dedicated to the “discovery” of the Americas. By looking at the productive nature of memorialisation, this paper questions this narrative of discovery. It looks at the history of the conquest of America as a moment of violence and massacre. Following the idea of coloniality of power and coloniality of being, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between coloniality and commemoration by analysing the different meanings of the statue of Columbus in Barcelona. I problematize and reconceptualise the monument from a decolonial perspective that highlights the subjugated knowledge of colonial conquest. I utilise the notion of epistemologies of ignorance to highlight how the statue is a representation of the master narrative of colonialism and consequently how this narrative acts to silence counter narratives of Columbus and Spanish history. Colonial monuments such as the Columbus statue are a tribute to on-going coloniality and the continuation of violence against racial ‘Others’. Thus, what is presented as a normative tribute to discovery is re-presented in this paper as a memorial to war and genocide.