Rethinking monuments after Black Lives Matter: a view from the graveyard

Abstract

In the wake of Black Lives Matter, spoken and written debates among activists, artists, politicians and scholars about the fate of existing monuments of historical figures and what form new ones should take have been rich and exhaustive. Official policy and spontaneous action, both varied and contentious, have brought to the fore the absence of common ground. Because these kinds of monuments are invested in portraying an idealized reality, and because most are inspired by Graeco-Roman antiquity, they are arguably not strongly positioned to capture or even interpret the past. This article argues that historic cemeteries, classified as monuments through usage, preserve the lived past and simultaneously hold potential pathways for a communal future in ways that conventional monuments cannot. Drawing on selected examples of hemispheric American cemeteries devoted to people of African descent, particularly one from the former Dutch colony of Suriname, this article argues that the multidisciplinary study of historic burial grounds is more beneficial to both scholarly and descendant communities than the building of new monuments. The quest for common ground can be found, literally, in common ground.