located: | USA |
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editor: | Shira Jeczmien |
It quickly escalated far beyond the initial spark, but Charlottesville’s march began with a controversy over the statue removal of a confederate general Robert E. Lee. Portrayed atop a horse, both man and beast pastel green with nature and time, the vainglorious ode to Lee is just one of many confederate statues, dozens in fact, sprinkled across the US, and garnishing cities around the world.
In Bristol, citizens have been demanding the removal of Edward Colston’s statue since the late 90s, after it was publicised that the celebrated philanthropist also happened to be a big time player in the slave trade. In Ukraine, all 1,320 statues of Lenin have been removed and city streets renamed since a 2015 initiative by President Petro Poroshenko. And after the violence portrayed in Virginia just a few weeks ago, confederate statues are being swiftly plucked out from the soil of 30 cities across the US.
Without realising it, per se, the recent Charlottesville march and protests across the country have inserted America into the flaming centre of a heated debate otherwise going on for decades in the cerebral sphere of academia. Since thinkers like James E. Young and Andreas Huyssen began writing about the socio-historical issues embedded in commemoration statues and monuments, what we understand as ‘the monument’ has come a long way; and thank Chronos it has.
In 1986 the Monument Against Fascism was built in Harburg, Germany. A single pillar coated in malleable metal, it was thirsty to be vandalised, scratched, engraved with whatever the public wanted to use its canvas for. Every six months the pillar was lowered into the ground, until nothing was left of it. It marked a new approach to what could be considered a monument. It was a protest against permanency, which lends itself to issues of authority; of whose story is it telling, who has it left out, and what might it represent in the future – as history continues to evolve, shifting left and shifting right.
Confederate statues were built to hold onto a culture that’s in desperate need of defeating, and of burrowing into the realms of history books instead of our streets. Executive director of the American Historical Association James Grossman said, "These statues were meant to create legitimate garb for white supremacy. Why else would you put a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson in 1948 in Baltimore?"
As Trump continues to mourn the loss of “our beautiful statues and monuments”, I can’t help but wonder, if the ancient Egyptians were still around, would they fight to alter the pyramids of their vicious pharaohs, or if the Incas had a voice to protest, would Machu Picchu look the same?