I belong to a culture that discourages the visual representations of human body based on the belief that it represent an act of idolatry. You have to respect the other fellow humans, but their image in stone or other is an act of worshiping which does not suit the dynamics of the everyday relationship with God. Most of the synagogues do not have images or paintings and you will only find exquisite, colourful decorations in the Oriental-Moorish-style places of worship. No matter my current degree of religious observation, I am still reluctant towards the invasive presence of human representations but as a historian of mentalities I am always very curious to check the ways in which certain personalities are represented as well as the addenda associated with it.
The Western culture in its entirety is, on the other hand, organised and based on a complex system of visual representation, which originates from the Christian symbolism. Saints and their visual representations are intercessors to the God, according to the Christian belief, therefore churches and later, public spaces, are frequent spaces which host elaborated human images.
The same frequent representation of images with a religious symbolism characterizes the Asian realm as well, with Indian and Japanese or Thai gods, among others, being worshipped intensively in and outside the temples, often by bringing offers and decorating their statues with clothes or flower guirlands.
The laicization of the public space in Europe led to a replacement of the originary religious meaning associated to the statues to a code aimed to reproduce the values of nationalism. The same system but read in a different key. The decision towards having a certain personality represented in the public space become a matter of political decision, as part of a symbolic repertoire that has to do with strengthening the sense of belonging and the national narrative in general. Having displayed a statue in a public space involves an array of administrative measures, with a symbolic weight, from the decision of the location, until the choice of the representation of the statue, usually a pitch during which various artists present their view on the specific personality and the funding of the work as such.
The extreme case of the Soviet-inspired visual propaganda is an illustration of the pressure towards creating a unified perspective which starts with the education of children in school, mostly the texts from the ´classical´ writers of the accepted dogma, and the further cultural productions - exhibitions, movie production, media focus. Once the communism was over, the masses out on the streets to celebrate the beginning of the reign of freedom attacked the statues of the communist idols - among others the ones in the memory of the ´Soviet soldier freedom fighters´ or the Lenin/Marx/Engels statues. Soon after, those were replaced by the new national heroes many of them controversial as well because they are representing values that are in open conflict with the democratic system the post-communist countries were supposed to embrace. The statues of the racist Admiral Horthy in Hungary or Marschal Antonescu in Romania are just some examples of such historical turn-outs.
In Western Europe and USA, the public spaces are shared with personalities whose inclusion within the national narrative are rarely contested. It is generally assumed that by the very fact of including them into the gallery of national heroes they were on the ´good´ democratic side as the countries themselves are associated with democracy and rule of law.
The current war on statues that started in the American cities following the murdering of a black citizen, George Floyd, proves that when it comes to statues too, things are rarely just black and white. The removal of confederate monuments and personalities with a strong racist, white-supremacy message is a process that started at the beginning of the 2000s but it seems it is far from being properly underwent the middle of the process. On the other side of the pond, the well known racist writings of Cecil Rhodes haven´t discouraged his display at Oxford and even naming him for a prestigious scholarship operated since 1902. True is that in such wars, there are, as usual collateral victims, as the case of the statue of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes whose statue was recently defaced in San Francisco. Was he took for the colonialist Columbus or someone was really disgusted by the war against windmills that his main character, Quixote, fiercely leads ?
Academically speaking, dealing with statues is far more complicated than dealing with controversial texts. In the case of the texts, one can use a critical apparatus in order to create the context and offer a different perspective as well as to reject the problematic affirmations. A statue is an inert piece of stone in the middle of a square and adding a critical text does not guarantee that someone will ever read it. Plus, removal of the statue means political AND administrative decisions which are not easily and wholeheartedly taken.
Should those statue stay there? The role of the academics is to lead the intellectual debate about those controversial figures and their role in the national(istic) representation. Historians of mentalities have the role of exposing, where necessary, the controverses and the inappropriate content for a democratic society. They have to assume a public role, as intellectuals, especially through articles in the main media outlets, that can create a debate at a different level and pressure the decision makers towards a decision for removing those statues. Such a background will lead possibly to a more peaceful and conflict-free approach of the issue and will also avoid confusions and a general outrage against innocent statues, as in the case of the poor creator of Quixote.
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