In this article, I pierce my ambivalence about statutes, to examine 3 arguments against pulling them down:
That this re-writes history
That this is not objective
That this is judging the people they commemorate with the values of our times, not theirs.
folukeafrica.com/judging-stat...
This is great! It also chimes with this piece, also in my feed thus morning. Monuments are interventions in public space, aiming to nail down one meaning.
buttondown.email/ModernMediev...
... also the "of their times" argument fails because monuments are *by their nature* temporally displaced, put up later, often much later after whatever is memorialized, to rework the past for the purposes of whoever has the power and wealth to put large objects in public places.
Such a lovely article! I really enjoyed reading it. It reminds me of recent conversations I have been having about science fiction, time travel, and how we can use those to understand the meanings made by legal history.
