Mortal Monuments
Mortal Monuments
A Partial History of Collective Oblivion
“For humans, forgetting is the norm and remembrance is a deliberate effort. ”
A monument is a statement for immortality. Adapted from Latin commemoratus, the word “commemorate” means “to collectively (prefix com-) remember (root memor-).” For humans, forgetting is the norm and remembrance is a deliberate effort. With a long lifespan as architecture, a monument materializes this vision to collectively perpetuate the memory, as it solidifies and glorifies an image that is culturally associated with a certain history. For the community, the monument they erect serves as the nexus of their solidarity, which constantly romanticizes and reminds them of their shared history. But in the recent period, the fact that numerous monuments have been defaced, vandalized, and demolished suggests that the figurative monument’s physical body has turned into the gravitational center of conflict, its representative meaning from heroism to hatred and oppression.
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a nationwide wave of monument removal unfolds alongside the BLM movements. Most of the removed monuments are statues of Confederate generals, slave traders, Christopher Colombus, and former presidents. The public is suddenly pained to the peak by the longtime itchy company of an object that perpetuates an icon of questionable value, and in the demolition of such iconic objects, people choose to collectively forget. In fact, the organized demolitions following BLM is not unprecedented, the public has conducted many phases of mass demonumentalization. Though obsoleteness is the normal fate of most artworks, the act of demolishing a monument carries an immaterial corrective rebellion which makes its painful erasure fundamentally different from forgetful abandonment.
Columbus Statue torn down at Minnesota State Capitol on June 10, 2020, Tony Webster
Although the public’s act of destroying monuments can be traced as far back as the age of the Pharaohs, whose statues usually bear curses to anyone who tear them down, we are witness to another wave of demonumentalization that has become increasingly concentrated in the recent months in the United States.
U.S. timeline of monuments discussed, from birth to death. By author.
Similar events happened two to three years ago in the South and curiously, they also happened as a reaction against some racial supremacy display. In August 2017, Duke University ordered the removal of a limestone statue of Robert E. Lee from the niche of Duke’s Chapel after it was defaced. Since then, one of the six niches at the entrance of Duke Chapel has been left vacant, like a wound of some shameful past, or a pedestal of a phantom. On August 11th and 12th, 2017, a violent clash between the white supremacist rally “Unite the Right” and protesters broke out in Charlottesvile, VA, and following that, Lee’s monument at Duke in Durham, NC was vandalized, “his” nose chiseled off, before taken down. Not long after, UNC’s authorities removed Confederate “Silent Sam” from their campus, so did the city of Baltimore to four Confederate statues.
Robert E. Lee Statue Removed from Duke Chapel Niche, 2017, Leoneda+Inge / WUNC
When stone carver John Donnelly conceived the statues in the niches of the Duke Chapel in the early 1930s, he apparently treated those as works of art commissioned by a prominent private client. Because James B. Duke was a Methodist, Donnelly decided that leading figures from the Methodist history and from the American South exceeded saints in their appropriateness to Duke’s taste. The statues embodied and preserved the Southern history and upheld the client’s values. Donnelly’s client-based choices and process of completion were nothing more than natural by the conventional standards of the domain of art, but Lee’s statue clearly transcended that.
“People are more sensitive to symbols than we realize. ”
A monument is often more than a work of art; its existence as a sign vehicle often transcends its materiality and takes a life of its own. The treatment of Lee’s statue reflects an interesting fact: the figurative monument inherits the public sentiment and reactions of the signified object. In C.S. Peirce’s triadic theory of the sign, an icon is a sign with physical likeliness to the signified object, while a symbol is arbitrarily associated with the signified object in a cultural framework. Although it failed in any formal resemblance to General Lee, its connection to the general grew out of symbolical nature. This signification of the Confederate Army shadowed upon the experience of whoever was entering the Chapel, the vertical center of the Duke campus. When context changed, the connection between the monument and its object took a vicious turn. The statue triggered a piece of painful collective memory among the community and became targeted by the protesters and the university president for the very same reason, despite that it had no practical influence over policy.
Monuments’ mortality is associated with social upheavals. The earliest account of demonumentalization in the Unites States dates to 1776, just after the Declaration of Independence, when soldiers and civilians pulled down a statue of British King George III in Manhattan. It is ironic that the King’s statue was made of bronze like many Confederate monuments, a metal that can be melted and easily remodeled as needed during times of war or change of regimes. The King’s image as a signifier became so powerful that the bronze that once made King George III’s statue was remodeled into cannonballs, so that in the war Americans could fire at British army pieces of their own king. The process was so intensely satisfying that it bordered on a festive zeal.
A painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel depicted the destruction of the statue in 1776 Credit: New-York Historical Society.
Monuments are products of their environment, just as people are products of their community. Different from George III, the demonumentalization of focus here is a culture’s destruction of the culture’s own icons, or a term known as iconoclasm. One explanation for the mass demonumentalization after the murder of George Floyd is the social instability. Before the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the United States has suffered under a global pandemic and economic recession for over two months, and during the quarantine, the highest risks and heaviest burdens fell on the essential workers. The demographic makeup of both essential workers and COVID-infected patients were racially biased toward people of color – it indicates that the inequality in class, in access to resources and in exposure to virus is closely linked with systemic oppression. When the killing happened, it toppled over a wavering glass that had already been fulfilled. In peaceful protests and violent rioting, monuments of Confederates and figures connected with slave trade were wiped out in many cities and states either by civilians or by local governments, as they symbolized slavery and systemic racism. As the protests heated, Christopher Columbus was targeted as he represented colonial oppression to Native Americans. The will to destroy monuments also involved former presidents whose statues imply inequality, a gesture that may be perceived as anarchist.
According to C.S. Peirce, signs exist within context and their interpretant. The Emancipation Memorial located in Lincoln Park, Washington D.C., shows Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation with an African American kneeling at his feet. The plaque reads “Freedom’s Memorial in grateful memory of Abraham Lincoln.” Installed in 1876, the monument was allegedly gifted by colored citizens. Despite the origin in the popular narrative, the monument was not uniformly well received since its installation. Though the initial criticism from Frederick Douglass was long buried in citizens’ perception of it as the “norm,” the monument reignited the most vehement wave of criticism and vandalization during the George Floyd protests. The deferent kneeling posture of the African American man, his nudity, and the condescending posture Lincoln with a “white savior” aura were powerful cues that incite an uncontrollable unease from the community. It became an odd and problematic existence; removal will erase an important segment of history, but its prominent visual symbolism only made Lincoln’s continued memory more vicious.
Falling of Lenin in Khmelnytskyi Park. Volodymyr D-k
Once a sociopolitical movement erupts, a reframing of people’s belief system follows. Such wave in the United States at present is similar in many aspects to that in Ukraine and many ex-Soviet countries. Before and after the Soviet Union collapse, a frenzy of destroying statues of Lenin and of Stalin known as Leninfall followed changes in ideology and global conflicts. Since the first Lenin statue was taken down in 1990, the first stage of Leninfall removed over 2,000 monuments in the 90s; the second stage in the 2000s removed over 600; the third stage from 2005 to 2008 removed 800; triggered by the 2014 Ukraine-Russia crisis, Leninfall staged a comeback in 2014 removed 552. Unlike the isolated incidence of 2 or 3 removals that often happen, the four stages of Leninfall is comparable to the escalating wave of demonumentalization in the George Floyd aftermath. Both are massive-scaled, interrelated events triggered by political tumults; both involved bottom-up social movements. One important commonality is that both dealt with killing icons that their own cultures attempted to perpetuate at some point of history. Although the contexts are different, in both waves, certain controversial historical figures inadvertently became people’s psychological attribution of a wide scope of social pathologies, as well as local governments’ tools to whitewash their lack of action for change.
“Monuments are products of their environment, just as people are products of their community. ”
If one wonders where the removed monument ends up, it is relevant to analyze why the particular monument was removed. Reasons behind demonumentalization are complex and not all of them are warranted or justified. These reasons can be categorized into three basic types – purposeful, emotional, and ironic. Purposeful causes include revolution, protest, demonstration, persistence to social equity, reaction to triggering events, corrective remedy, and concerns for safety (for local government). Monuments removed out of purposeful reasons are usually stored away in a less visible place, stripped of their power as symbols because of the loss of interpreter audience. Emotional causes are more volatile and range from retaliation, hatred, and catharsis. Perhaps the most different from what is claimed in public, the ironic causes include entertainment and celebration. Monuments removed out of emotional or ironic causes are likely defaced, disassembled, burnt, or thrown into water.
Though dismissed by some as “cosmetic surgery,” the destruction of monuments is a natural phase of their life. Commemoration is mediated by the cultural context, so monuments can never be apolitical. No matter still standing or already dead, still remembered or long forgotten, monuments are an inseparable part of human culture although its place in human’s future has been called to question. They remind us that meaning is mediated by the interpreter, who will continue to gradually dilute the creator’s intention with time.
References:
Atkin, Albert, "Peirce's Theory of Signs", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/peirce-semiotics/>.
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Fortin, Jacey. “Toppling Monuments, a Visual History.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 17, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/controversial-statues-monuments-destroyed.html.
Hoopes, James (ed.) (1991) Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mann, Ted. “Lincoln Statue With Kneeling Black Man Becomes Target of Protests.” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, June 26, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-take-aim-at-statue-of-lincoln-with-kneeling-ex-slave-11593090836.
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