Monuments matter
Why and how do monuments matter? Prof. Ann Rigney (Languages, Literature and Communication) wrote a about these important questions on the website of research project .
The Vendôme column
On 16 May 1871, the Vendôme column in Paris was destroyed on the orders of the Commune. As the visual record shows, the demolition of the Vendôme column was a huge and solemn undertaking in which symbolism and materiality were deeply entangled. Given the current wave of attacks on statues associated with racism, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the case of the Commune provides not just evidence that monuments matter but also food for thought on why they do so.
Historical injustice
The problem with the column was not just its meaning, but its materiality. Its looming presence was an irritant: offensive. Monuments like these continue to express and uphold values – of militarism as in the case of the Vendôme column, of racism in the case of statues to the Confederacy – and cannot be dismissed as sanitized or ‘beautiful’ relics of times past. To leave them intact and in situ is to be complicit in the perpetuation of historical injustice. Not just in an abstract sense, as a matter of principle, but in a way that intrudes physically into the very texture of public life.