Jump to content

Statues, Monuments, and When to Take Down or Leave Up Ones Dedicated To Flawed Historical Figures


Recommended Posts

we have tonsa bullshit confederate monuments in new orleans, even after beauregard, lee, and joff came down a couple years ago.  lotsa confederacy streets, too. 

am of the opinion that they should not have come down.  their removal is a whitewash; they should've remained as memento mori, warnings, markers of folly.  leftwing ideas moreover could've been placed adjacent thereto in counter-monuments, supplemental doubled street names, relentless graffiti. on jeff davis parkway, where his statue was at the canal street intersection, a counter-monument of a postwar dispossessed slave owner in manacles could've been erected. 

agreed, also, that it is difficult to distinguish confederate from other political and military markers except that the CSA lost its war against a different slave-state.  this is not a principled distinction.

the destroyed markers could've been sites of ongoing struggle, loci of pedagogy, continual incitements to critical reflection on history, a reminder of the trajectory to the present moment. now they're empty, anodyne, bourgeois correct.

endorsing removal on the basis of confederate 'treason' enhances a toxic nationalism that anti-racists should avoid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m for tearing down any monument. Our tax dollars pay for them, they are merely objects. If it is cathartic to pull them down (as it was in Saint Paul, MN recently when the American Indian Movement toppled Columbus, the father of a genocide and a slaver), that’s the only good they’ve ever done for anyone. They belong to the people, let the people throw them in the lake if they like. As an artist and as an indigenous person, art isn’t static, and there’s no good reason to leave the same boring sculptures up everywhere forever. Even if they weren’t offensive, we should be pulling them down to make new and exciting use of public art spaces instead of making us all look at more old dead white guys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think we can ever come up with a general rule that fits every case. Never removing any statue is a bad rule, because statues of confederate generals or mass murdering conquistadors are simply offensive. In Belgium they recently began removing statues of king Leopold II, who was among the absolute scum of the Earth, no holds barred Hitler-class evil. I can't see how that can be a bad thing. On the other hand, if every slave owner must go then down goes the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, and basically everything else celebrating the earliest history of the US. (And similarly in the rest of the world.)

What we have to do is a case by case judgement. Washington? Probably stays. Nathan Bedford Forrest? Tear down that asshole. It's OK if it's not consistent - something tolerated in one place might be considered offensive somewhere else - and it's also OK if a statue that was considered fine 10 years ago is now regarded as offensive. The times change.

The public perception is the guiding star here. I don't think you should hide or censor history, but statues exist in the public space and don't just reflect the history but also who we as a society today think are worthy of honoring. People have a right to decide about their public space. If there's widespread enough support for removing a statue, then let's remove it. Simple as that.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mount Rushmore is an interesting monument to talk about since its existence is basically one giant fuck you to many of the local indigenous groups. Returning it to them, and if they want to blast those faces off the mountain I only hope they record it so the rest of us can see it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Mount Rushmore is an interesting monument to talk about since its existence is basically one giant fuck you to many of the local indigenous groups. Returning it to them, and if they want to blast those faces off the mountain I only hope they record it so the rest of us can see it.

....Except the tourist money from Mouth Rushmore is hugely important to the South Dakotan economy.  Blowing it up does not seem helpful.  How bout this instead?  That money goes to more favorable ways?  Funding for more indigenous groups and whatever? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the destruction of historical statues and monuments is almost always a bad thing. You can change the way you  think of the past, but the past did happen (there was a time when the people of your city thought it is a good idea to commemorate this person) and to learn about that is good. Also a lot of statues are a work of art and their destruction is in itself barbaric.

IMO there are three ways to handle statues of people which do not meet todays ethical standards:

after discussion of the people who live in this city (their city council or such)

1.) the statue stays

2.) the statue stays with an explanation (almost always the best option in my opinion)

3.) the statue is removed and put in a museum

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Right now there are cemeteries with memorials to German War dead from WWII on French soil in Normandy.  They are carefully crafted and are not “monuments” to the reason those people were fighting.  

I would suggest that a large portion of the issue here is the use of “monuments” celebrating and attempting to glorify Confederate dead (individually and collectively) as opposed to “memorials” expressing grief over the fact that these people (or persons) died for a cause that wasn’t worth their lives.  If monuments were removed and memorials (with lost cause BS excised from their markers) would that be a satisfactory solution?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Hereward said:

And one of them is in my (and his) home town. But the difference is that he wasn’t a traitor to his country. He would have been horrified at the idea. He didn’t declare independence from his country, he fought to change how it was run.

He was not born in a country, he was born in a kingdom. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Right now there are cemeteries with memorials to German War dead from WWII on French soil in Normandy.  They are carefully crafted and are not “monuments” to the reason those people were fighting. 

I'll use this point to point out in turn that these soldiers had little agency in their story.

The main problem I see with "statues" is that most of them are dedicated to people of our dominant castes, or people who rose to become part of those castes. And of course, being at the top of the socio-economic structure means you automatically have some responsibility in whatever awful shit goes on in your day.

To compare to our times. Today there are (among other terrible things) sweatshops in Bengladesh. We certainly all share some responsibility in the godawful global economy that makes this possible, but don't the CEOs and the politicians have a bit more responsibility in this?

I believe if you think about the statues we erect, weirdly enough people from lower classes will be far less problematic than those from higher ones. I'm inclined to think that statues dedicated to intellectuals, activists, and scientists will raise far fewer questions than people who were born in power and can thus be blamed for far more.
In a nutshell, I think Rosa Parks and Marie Curie will magically be far more blameless than JFK or Clémenceau.
Or, if you think of the US, Thomas Paine or Ralph Waldo Emerson rather than George Washington or Theodore Roosevelt.

So perhaps the original problem is also the "hero-worhsip" that we humans have, and who is the target of it. We tend to love people of wealth and power, and pretend to be surprised when it turns out that that wealth can come from dubious origins and that power can be used for nefarious purposes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Slavery was important to the Souths economy. I don't really give a shit about that, just about indigenous folks right to their land.

Almost literally every edifice in the United States of America is an offense to the indigenous of this country.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Needing statues that actively insult members of our society in order to remember the past says a lot about the education system in the USA.

There is no reason to erect new statues of persons which do not meet todays standards (that would be insulting?) But the past did happen, no one  of the people of today are actively insulting anyone with this. But to loose historic memories and artifacts are bad. I find the reason  "insulting"  rather terrifying. It is the reason with which the taliban destroyed the Buddahs of Bamiyan, or with the the European conquerors destroyed temples in South America and so on...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

In a nutshell, I think Rosa Parks and Marie Curie will magically be far more blameless than JFK or Clémenceau.
Or, if you think of the US, Thomas Paine or Ralph Waldo Emerson rather than George Washington or Theodore Roosevelt.

So perhaps the original problem is also the "hero-worhsip" that we humans have, and who is the target of it. We tend to love people of wealth and power, and pretend to be surprised when it turns out that that wealth can come from dubious origins and that power can be used for nefarious purposes.

I'm really not sure Tom Paine is your best example there when juxtaposing the gentry of the US with the "have nots."  Hell even Emerson is questionable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Maithanet said:

You shouldn't ignore that Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders...

I think you can stop there. 

If we need to bring all the statues down then we need to bring all the statues down.  No one is being removed from history.  Tributes to them are being removed from places of honor we know they do not deserve to occupy.  This kind of thing is part of us trying to figure out how not to be shitty people.     

PS...I quoted Maithanet but I am really responding generally to a sentiment I have seen a few times in the thread. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm really not sure Tom Paine is your best example there when juxtaposing the gentry of the US with the "have nots."  Hell even Emerson is questionable.

I know, I kinda did it on purpose (kinda). The point is that Paine and Emerson were never in power.

A simpler way of putting it is that I will not blame historical figures for holding "debatable" views if they never had a chance to do anything with them (one way or the other).
It's kind of a consequentialist moral view.

Not saying my examples are great, or that the thing is well-thought out, I'm typing this with my kid harassing me rn. But you get the gist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, DMC said:

You left out how he left his estate in grave debt.  Jefferson is most certainly in hell if there is that silly sort of thing.  Doesn't mean he wasn't a genius, for all his faults in so so many ways.  I'm not sure how far you want to go with this.  If we're going to judge every historical actor by certain standards, then almost literally all of the DC monuments are going to have to be abolished.  Including the Capitol and the White House.

Yeah, but he's probably at least in the fun part of hell, where everyone is taking tequila shots. Not Hitler's lame section in which everyone is drinking diet draft beer. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not really all that invested in this debate, but from it I learned of this statue, just outside Svolvær. 

I think we need more like her. For context, the statue is called "Fiskerkona" - "The fisherman's wife" - and represents the many wifes and mothers spending a lot of time each year waiting to see whether their loved ones came home this time, or if the sea had claimed them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...