Read on Twitter
1/ Statues are once again very much in public mind.
I will propose here a set of #publichistory resources that can help us negotiate the difficult ground of memory, commemoration, history, and understanding.
I will propose here a set of #publichistory resources that can help us negotiate the difficult ground of memory, commemoration, history, and understanding.
2/ First, I editorialized a bit about statues and naming a bit in another thread, here: https://twitter.com/s_schwinghamer/status/1315025739838820356?s=20
3/ I guess a first question is, not facetiously, what IS a statue? A plaque? It’s a realization of a selective historical narrative. Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, & Maoz Azaryahu sum this up as follows:
( https://www.jstor.org/stable/41148291?seq=1)
( https://www.jstor.org/stable/41148291?seq=1)
4/ Commemorative splatters are a result of these decisions, made at specific points in time and by specific individuals or groups. The existence of a statue or plaque does not imply, let alone confirm, any social license or consensus regarding the narrative it supports.
5/ Example: in Canada, we generally trust history at National Historic Sites (The Pasts Collective, Cdns & Their Pasts, Ch. 3). This program includes people & events of national significance. But 95% of applications for designation come from the public. https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/culture/clmhc-hsmbc/ncp-pcn
6/ Yes, the application survives vetting against sound criteria, and some pretty sharp scholars will create a suitable historical report. But the *selection* of what is considered for commemorated / designated is not a sophisticated process. Public request, or nah…
7/ One of the major problems that this kind of process is vulnerable to, is a kind of gentrification. The existence of municipal “master plans” of commemoration is a signal of the kind of authorization needed to alter influential geographies of memory. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02665433.2013.874956
8/ Digression: interesting work has been done wrt housing and the preservation / conservation of heritage that is relevant to this question. (See eg Herzfeld, “Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of History,” Current Anthropology 51:S2 Oct 2010, 259-267)
9/ Who can engage this kind of power? Well, the state itself: “nations reinforce their continuity by performance and mass participation in repetitive re-enactment,” as Osborne says.
https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA89970651&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00083496&p=AONE&sw=w
https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA89970651&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00083496&p=AONE&sw=w
10/ But lots of commemorative gestures – even those understood to emanate from political authority – are really driven by private interest. And not just any interest will do: think about what is required to put up a statue, in terms of logistics.
11/ You need an artist, materials, a design, a place to put the statue, a permit to put the statue there, transportation for the statue, maybe lighting or landscaping around it, etc. This ain’t trivial stuff. Even just the time to organize this is a signal of privilege or power.
12/ So access to memorializing is absolutely a determinant, and there are potent active and passive gatekeeping mechanisms. Overcoming those barriers absolutely requires a concerted effort by specific people at a specific time.
13/ This is where is gets fun. Who put that up and why? In the US, Confederate statues have been making news recently. Pro-statue folks talk about them being symbols of Southern heritage, which has been exhaustively critiqued. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future
14/ But…how about if it was a British statue of a Confederate “hero,” imported to old Confederacy central? The Brits who provided the statue had a different agenda than the locals who put it up, but they *were* a valuable momentary political connection. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14664650802021733
15/ It pays to understand cases like this, because in many cases appeals to leave our heritage landscape untouched make false claims on the specific histories of the commemoration in place. Here in #Halifax, we have the statue of Cornwallis (ish: it’s not him, but whatevs)
16/ John Reid’s work on the contexts of Cornwallis and the statue is still a great place to get started on understanding this controversy: the statue recalls a key colonizing city founder, but also a violent man who offered a reward for Mi’kmaq scalps.
https://www.rnshs.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RNSHS_ThreeLivesEdwardCornwallis_JohnGReid_2013.pdf
https://www.rnshs.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RNSHS_ThreeLivesEdwardCornwallis_JohnGReid_2013.pdf
17/ This controversy sparked the city to undertake a substantial inquiry into commemoration and also the recognition of Indigenous heritage. See the resulting report from the task force, chaired by @m_m_macdonald and Rod Googoo, then Chief of We’koqma’q: https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/200721rc11110.pdf
18/ This report starts off super-strong, and I recommend it to students of #publichistory and memory. Their initial clear separation of history and commemoration cuts to the heart of so much of what is disputed around statues, plaques, naming, and the like.
19/ For me, there’s of course another piece in understanding the statue, perhaps best understood by those viewing this from elsewhere by literally seeing the statue in its context:
https://archives.novascotia.ca/mccully/archives/?ID=80
https://archives.novascotia.ca/mccully/archives/?ID=80
20/ #Halifax hotel folks didn’t want that railway hotel screwing up their delicate business balance, the #cdnimm bunch didn’t want to move from their nice digs at Pier 2 to the Pier 21 (though they came around)…
21/ …but magically, we’re supposed to think this silly not-actually-Cornwallis statue was somehow a grassroots founder-of-the-city-much-beloved thing?
Narrator: It was not.
Narrator: It was not.
22/ $15k of the $20k cost for not-Cornwallis came from CN (context: less than a tenth of a percent of the value of the surrounding redevelopment, including freight and passenger piers, union station, new rail routes, etc.) after a lacklustre public appeal for funds.
23/ Reid sums up the mood around the statue as “imperialism and boosterism,” which checks out against its place. It’s in a massive commercial development intended to entrench transatlantic links – with Britain first, and maybe some other places – as the lifeblood of the city.
24/ For much, much, much more on this case, see https://activehistory.ca/tag/edward-cornwallis/
25/ This case underscores why it is necessary to explore the function of a monument as it was emplaced, in order to effectively respond to it in the present landscape. There are lots of other cases that, uh, odd contexts, like Leif Erikson in Boston
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/histmemo.30.2.04?seq=1
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/histmemo.30.2.04?seq=1
26/ Or, weirdly, Massasoit in Kansas City
https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2717804
https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2717804
27/ Or again, Ghandi at Wellington Railway Station (this one’s a treat for how the author rebuilds context)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41305424?seq=1
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41305424?seq=1
28/ So, enough. We now have an idea of the challenges of emplacing a statue, and the not-uncommon situation of their utter incoherence with history and place (even though they may anchor or invent a landscape).
Q: What do these things DO?
Q: What do these things DO?
29/ A: Not much, and definitely not what is commonly supposed.
30/ To be clear, statues and the like do not provide much learning value. In Canadian context, there are a couple of good studies that illustrate this for us. The first is a (mildly embarrassing) study involving university students at Brock University. This one deals with naming.
31/ Brock University is named for Major-General Isaac Brock, a n experienced British officer who did the shooty-shoots for Canada (War of 1812) with varying success: he successfully assaulted an enemy fort (good army thing) but got shot at Queenston Heights (bad human thing).
32/ There is no shortage of information about Brock on campus for students. He’s got a statue that weighs nearly two tons on campus, and since we all learn about the past from statues, that by itself should wrap this up!
33/ Actually, despite road names and art and statues and artifacts and sports teams and murals and oh, books and courses and flags and everything, it turns out that General Brock is more of a misty-mascot brand to students than an invigorated historical figure.
34/ There are some learning outcomes from the combined impact of the symbols on campus, at the depth of “militarism is cool” and “War of 1812 VICTORY” which is all fine for jingoism but a bit thin if we’re going for meaningful engagement with the past. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10714413.2016.1178542
35/ Next up, a study that engages public memory around a statue of a soldier. Out of a public survey of 162 people (more than 70% of whom said they were interested in history, all of whom were physically near the monument), just 6% knew what it was for. TEN PEOPLE.
36/ 80% said they read historical plaques and inscriptions; also, 80% reported never reading the plaque on the monument next to them.
37/ #publichistory kills me sometimes
38/ I love the quotes that the authors include, but especially this one:
39/ This monument, so misunderstood as to be meaningless in relation to its original purpose, took on a new job: reinforcing militarism and modeling citizenship. It became a kind of generic ideological device, rather than fostering knowledge of the past. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527250601118951?journalCode=rjhs20
40/ Aside: this is part of why re-evaluating public commemorative splatter is important. It isn’t historical. It is an ideological tool with slippery meanings. This is also why straight historical arguments about the subjects of monuments are disingenuous at best.
41/ So, not actually educational, then. What commemorative stuff does is enforce a desired construction of the past, often messy and ridden with conflict.
Some argue that intentional commemorations will always provoke cross-readings... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305748815001991
Some argue that intentional commemorations will always provoke cross-readings... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305748815001991
42/ For a picture of how a state might view the narrative potential and utility of monuments, consider the manifold Japanese political responses to “comfort women” statues that have been erected all over the world. (Chun deals with one in South Korea)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/755733/pdf
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/755733/pdf
43/ And finally, for consideration, here are a few discussions of interesting commemorative achievements:
James, on Budapest’s Statue Park Museum https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016344399021003001
James, on Budapest’s Statue Park Museum https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/016344399021003001
44/ Dembinska, on trust-building examples from Eastern Europe https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449050903564845
45/ Korson, on the integrative potential / reconciliation via memorials in New Caledonia: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305748816000189
46/ So, in conclusion, hug an archivist (archives are both the engine of democratic accountability and the repository of our actual historical record)...
47/...and go tip a statue if you like (or at least lobby energetically for change). The historical record will be entirely unaffected, and our community heritage landscape will benefit from ongoing critique and renewal.
