Removal Of Statues Research Articles

Our Statues of Wrongdoers

ABSTRACTMany of those memorialized around us in statues are wrongdoers, and so we are often called to consider whether we should take down those statues. Some of those statutes are memorialized for reasons now taken to be wrong; others are memorialized not for but rather despite their wrongdoing. How should we consider those latter cases? One tempting analysis suggests that we need only consider whether the wrongdoing was sufficiently transgressive. In this article, however, I reject that constrained focus. Instead, these cases have as much to do with us, our priorities, and what those priorities should be as they have to do with the particulars of the lives of the subjects of the statues. Recognizing the central role that our priorities play in blame and condemnation better captures the contours of the debate about statue removal than any categorical rule about types of wrongs.

Tek Down Nelson! The Struggle for Repair in Barbados

AbstractIn this article I explore how the decommissioning of the statue of Lord Horatio Nelson captures some of the ways justice is envisioned within Barbados. I ask: How does the decommissioning generate more attention to the reparations question? How is repair and sovereignty conceptualised through the performances that animated and structured the event? What do these performances suggest about the Barbadian geographic‐historical foundation? I engage theorists of Black geographies and Black studies to work through the above questions. I do close readings of the performances featured in the ceremony, to illuminate how the decommissioning gestured to a range of histories and struggles that are punctuated by political transformation. My reading draws attention to how the statue's removal builds on regional demands for reparations and Barbadian struggles for sovereignty, which I argue are complementary aims.

Colonial statues as memorial contact zones: Macdonald, Cornwallis and statue removal in Canada

In recent years the negative experiences of colonization endured by Indigenous peoples in Canada have gained greater public awareness. As a result, narratives celebrating Canada’s colonial history have been disrupted, and the appropriateness of public statuary honouring figures associated with colonialism is now contested. Drawing on theories of collective memory and Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the ‘contact zone’, this article examines two statues that were removed from public spaces in 2018: J.A. Macdonald (1982) in Victoria, British Columbia, and Edward Cornwallis (1931) in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The removals occurred in the context of municipal efforts towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and represented deeply negative re-evaluations of the legacies of the men depicted. In this article, each statue is examined at three levels of history and memory: the historical basis for honouring Sir John A. Macdonald and Edward Cornwallis as ‘founders’, the conception and commissioning of their statues to embody these positive memories, and the more recent developments that have brought the negative memories of these men held by members of Indigenous communities into wider public knowledge, resulting in the removal of their statues. These removals represent a moderated form of iconoclasm, arising from a long-standing divergence in collective memories that has been given voice in the debate and dialogue in the contact zones that have formed around the statues.

De-picturing John A. Macdonald: Opportunities and Challenges of Representing Canada’s Past with Graphic History

This article explores the historiographical and methodological opportunities and challenges of graphic history to represent, interpret, and interrogate Canada’s past. Graphic history is a research-creation approach that combines word and picture to produce illustrated texts and comic book-style narratives. While I address important critiques about academic rigour, pedagogical value, and practical viability, I argue that graphic history has much potential to offer historians. By broadening our understanding of scholarly work, graphic histories can be accessible sources for wider audiences, critical resources for teaching and learning, and/or imaginative methods for engaging with historiographical issues. After examining the theories and practices of graphic history, I illustrate a graphic-text essay on the contested images of John A. Macdonald. Pictures of the first prime minister are well known to most Canadians in photograph, caricature, and statue, but his legacy has come under greater academic and public scrutiny, particularly regarding policies towards Indigenous peoples. I focus on Macdonald because debates over his commemoration are relevant to the ways in which historians represent and confront complicated pasts. I use related debates over statue removal and anxieties about erasure of history to explore deeper historiographic questions about representation, truth, presentism, and perspective. I argue that a graphic history approach is a medium for deconstructing, or, as I call it, de-picturing, a one-dimensional, dominant image of Macdonald on a pedestal, exhibited in bronze.

Le tourisme de mémoire en Floride. Les Fort Caroline et De Soto National Memorials, entre développement touristique et contestations mémorielles

This article focuses on the study of two colonial sites administered by the National Park Service. The two National Memorials deal with the colonial expeditions led by the Spanish and by the French in the sixteenth century. They have been transformed into touristic destinations where visitors are invited to relive and experience American history. They are both located outside the main touristic corridor of Florida, but the local authorities have been promoting the two sites to attract visitors. This study will show how these two experiences of touristic development compare in the recent debates over the removal of statues and monuments. The aim of this study is to understand the different political, financial and memorial levels at work in the touristic development of these two sites. It focuses particularly on the role they both play in the recent debates over the representation of native populations in history.

The unfallen statues of Hafez Al-Assad in Syria

The destruction of statues representing political figures carries symbolic meanings that are negotiated by the people who attack the statue and the regime that the statue represents. Across the Syrian territory, statues of Hafez Al-Assad symbolized the oppressive Ba’athist regime which shaped Syria's past and present for more than almost half a century. As a result, a cult of personality ensued. This paper analyses the destruction of Hafez Al-Assad statues as a case of iconoclasm, framed by how the Ba’athist regime used elements of the past to glorify the personality cult of Hafez Al-Assad (1971–2000) and later his son Bashar Al-Assad (2000-present), Syria's current president. Drawing on the work of political scientists, the paper will establish how this cult of personality operated, to understand how Syrians living under an authoritarian regime engaged with images of Hafez Al-Assad and on which terms. Furthermore, by considering the re-erection of statues representing Hafez Al-Assad the paper will also discuss unfallism to better describe the process of destruction and re-erection of statues in Syria. The underlying argument of this paper is that the destruction and re-erection of statues in Syria are acts that question the purpose of destroying a statue today, amidst the current climate of removal of statues in different parts of the world as a response to dismantling systems of oppression.

The limits of iconoclasm

Urban fallism in early revolutionary Russia was a political and aesthetic struggle rooted in imperial Russian civic culture. Few tsarist monuments were taken down in Moscow and Petrograd in 1917 and 1918 despite the violence of the social revolution and near universal hatred for the old regime. This selective iconoclasm occurred because the criteria for removal of statues in those cities reflected the aesthetic agenda of artists, critics, and campaigners from late imperial Russia who convinced Bolshevik politicians to accept their authority in art matters. After the February Revolution in 1917, public proposals for the large-scale dismantling of tsarist monuments received pushback from art professionals who argued that monuments should be protected according to their artistic value, not destroyed for their political representations. The Bolsheviks who took over in October 1917 deferred to such art experts on issues regarding monument demolition. The most recent monuments associated with official narratives and realist aesthetics of the deposed Nicholas II were removed, whilst others were protected as aesthetically desirable. Preservationists thus successfully changed the definition of political art from narrative content to aesthetic form and preserved some statues that political revolutionaries wanted to destroy. Today the Putin government seeks to protect Lenin monuments through a similar depoliticisation of revolutionary content inside a framework of historic preservation.

Administrative decision-making amid competing public sector values: Confederate statue removal in Baltimore, Maryland

ABSTRACTConfederate monuments conjure competing public sector values. Like many cities in the USA, Baltimore, Maryland had monuments honoring the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy”. Such monuments, usually constructed during periods of racial strife, typically feature prominent figures of the Confederacy, such as generals. Proponents of such monuments argue these monuments honor historical figures that shaped US history. Opponents assert monuments symbolize racist ideals and reinforce inequality, particularly for African Americans. Baltimore had four monuments until 2017. In the aftermath of two racially charged incidents following decades of social injustices, the Mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, ordered the monuments’ removal in August 2017. This case examines the details and rationale surrounding Pugh’s decision in the context of competing public sector values. The knowledge and skills gained from this case study can be applied to a range of public administration and policy issues involving social justice, administrative competencies, and leadership.

Silence is violence: (critical) psychology in an era of Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall

When Chumani Maxwele threw faeces on the statue of Cecil John on 9 March 2015, one wonders if the student from the University of Cape Town (UCT) knew that his act of defiance would be the tipping point for an international movement calling for the decolonisation of higher education, captured by the phrase #RhodesMustFall (RMF). Following insurmountable student and public pressure, UCT Council voted for the bronze statue's removal and, on 9 April 2015, took his final imperialist survey over his old colony. RMF, as a collective of staff and students at UCT, note that 'the fall of Rhodes is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege at our campus' (Rhodes Must Fall, 2015). A full list of its aims, objectives, and vision was contained in an online petition to the South African public and world at large (Change.org, 2015), igniting an explosion of analyses in the public sphere (e.g., Transform UCT, 2015).

Silence is violence : (critical) psychology in an era of Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall : editorial

When Chumani Maxwele threw faeces on the statue of Cecil John on 9 March 2015, one wonders if the student from the University of Cape Town (UCT) knew that his act of defiance would be the tipping point for an international movement calling for the decolonisation of higher education, captured by the phrase #RhodesMustFall (RMF). Following insurmountable student and public pressure, UCT Council voted for the bronze statue's removal and, on 9 April 2015, took his final imperialist survey over his old colony. RMF, as a collective of staff and students at UCT, note that 'the fall of Rhodes is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege at our campus' (Rhodes Must Fall, 2015). A full list of its aims, objectives, and vision was contained in an online petition to the South African public and world at large (Change.org, 2015), igniting an explosion of analyses in the public sphere (e.g., Transform UCT, 2015).

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Public monuments in colonial Nairobi were visual links to the British empire, and served as a means of asserting imperial power. During this period, colonial memories and identities were inscribed into Nairobi’s landscape by the dominant group, the elite of the European population. However, at the moment of Kenya’s achievement of independence from colonial rule, such identities and assertions of power were challenged as statues were removed from the city. This paper examines the forces behind the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape and how this landscape visualised the changing political and cultural contexts of the city. Comparisons are made with the removal of statues from Sudan, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to situate the Kenyan experience. Through a comparative examination of the decolonisation of Nairobi’s monumental landscape, this paper illustrates how the removal of public monuments from the city was exploited by both the coloniser and the colonised.

Imagined Communities in an Integrating Baltic Region

In December 2006, the Estonian government ordered a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier moved from a square in Tallinn to a more obscure location. The statue, which had been erected in 1947, was regarded by ethnic Estonians as a symbol of Soviet occupation and had become an icon of what Benedict Anderson would call old space.1 The statue was perceived to be a symbol of an earlier imperialistic and colonial Soviet occupying force. However, the large ethnic-Russian population in Estonia perceived it as a symbol of liberation from the Nazis, and the Russian Duma responded by denouncing the move. As might be true of a newspaper or a museum, many saw the statue as a tool in promoting an illegitimate identity for many ethnic Estonians.2 The statue's removal would more easily permit the creation (or re-creation) of a new space and a new time for Estonia. Ethnic Estonians, both politicians and the voters who elect them, would consolidate their own imagined community.Investigating Baltic Manifestations of Imagined CommunitiesThe entry of several former Warsaw Pact states into NATO and the EU has made national and ethnic identity issues within these countries more visible and politically sensitive. The nine former Communist societies (with the exception of Slovenia) have a unique perspective on this rapid and large-scale governance and economic change after having spent decades under the political and military tutelage of the Soviet Union. How imagined communities affect the larger European integration movement is not exactly clear. However, public opinion in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia demonstrates that there are differences based on several factors, making the Baltic states an even more distinct part of the former Warsaw Pact countries. Survey data indicate that not every ethnic group within these societies supports joining the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). One factor of possible importance might be the manifestation of imagined communities. Baltic societies are characterized as having pervasive ethnic divisions, with Russians being the dominant minority. Because the region has been considered an important part of the by tsarist Russian, Soviet, and modern Russian policymakers, any further loss of Moscow's political and economic influence caused by integration with Europe would conceivably put greater pressure on the Russian government to react. Concomitantly, minority ethnic Russians living in the near abroad might experience greater hardship, as they are politically and culturally separated from their homeland. In these cases, there is a two-way dynamic as Baltic imagined communities interact not only in a state and regional context but also in an international one.According to surveys, up to the point of accession, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians all saw membership in the EU and NATO differently from other ethnic groups and might have taken a different electoral stance if given the chance. In other words, individual economic and social circumstances, as well as political histories, would have influenced voters' attitudes if plebiscites had been held.In this article, I address why voters in the Baltic countries of the EU may have preferred membership in the EU and NATO-organizations with somewhat different objectives. First, I briefly consider the manifestation of imagined communities in Europe, including the Baltics, before and during the Cold War. Next, I discuss the role that the EU and NATO might have played in reference to imagined communities in the Baltics after the Cold War. After that, I briefly discuss the Baltic experience of economic and military integration. Next, I introduce survey data and several empirical analyses expressing how the existence of imagined communities may have impacted public opinion leading to the accessions of the Baltic countries to NATO. Other economic and political factors, such as personal income and satisfaction with democracy, are controlled for and included in these analyses. …