Monument Culture: International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World
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Overview
Monument Culture: International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World brings together a collection of essays from scholars and cultural critics working on the meanings of monuments and memorials in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a time of great social and political change.
The book presents a broad view of the challenges facing individuals and society in making sense of public monuments with contested meanings. From the United States to Europe to Africa to Australia and New Zealand to South America and beyond, the contributors tackle the ways in which different places approach monuments in a landscape where institutions and ideas are under direct challenge from political and social unrest. It also discusses sharply changed attitudes about the representation of history and memory in the public sphere.
The goal is to acknowledge shared experiences through a wider perspective; to contribute to the work of the world-wide heritage community; and to document the history and shifting cultural attitudes towards monument culture across the world, encouraging a more informed approach to monuments and their meanings especially for the public and those outside of academia.
Preface & Introduction
Laura A. Macaluso
Section 1: Monument Culture Leading Essay
Chapter 1
Homage to Charlottesville: The Spanish Civil War and the International Legacy of the U.S. Monuments Debate
Alex Vernon
Section 2: Monument Culture: Land, People and Place
Chapter 2
Implications of Erasure in Polynesia
Carmen S. Tomfohrde
Chapter 3
Monuments in Antarctica: Commemoration of Historic Events or Claims for Sovereignty?
Ingo Heidbrink
Chapter 4
Phnom Penh’s Independence Monument and Vientiane’s Patuxai: Complex Symbols of Postcolonial Nationhood in Cold War-era Southeast Asia
Roger Nelson
Chapter 5
Enshrining Racial Hierarchy through Settler Commemoration in the American West
Cynthia C. Prescott
Section 3: Monument Culture: Trauma/Violence and Reconciliation/Reparations
Chapter 6
In Defense of Historical Stains: How Clean Approaches to the Past Can Keep Us Dirty
Dan Haumschild
Chapter 7
Repairing and Reconciling with the Past: El Ojo que Llora and Peru’s Public Monuments
Ṅusta Carranza Ko
Chapter 8
Ruptures and Continuities in the Post-Apartheid Political and Cultural Landscape: A Reading of South African Monument Culture
Runette Kruger
Chapter 9
Beyond Ruins: Borgoño’s Barracks and the Struggle Over Memory in Today’s Chile
Basil Abdelrazeq Farraj
Section 4: Monument Culture: Migration and Identity
Chapter 10
Iconoclasm and Imperial Symbols: The Gough and Victoria Monuments in Ireland and the British World, 1880-1990
Derek N. Boetcher
Chapter 11
Monuments of Refugee Identity: Pain, Unity and Belonging in Three Monuments of Cappadocian Greeks
Zeliha Nilüfer Nahya and Saim Örnek
Chapter 12
Kindertransports in National and International Memory
Amy Williams
Chapter 13
A Cubist Portrait of Christopher Columbus: Studying Monuments as Transcultural Works
Chiara Grilli
Section 5: Monument Culture: Ambiguities and Alternatives
Chapter 14
Visible Differently: Roni Horn’s Vatnasafn/Library of Water as Memorial
Elliot Krasnopoler
Chapter 15
Monuments and Other Things that Change: Several Attempts at Titling a Photograph
Masha Vlasova
Chapter 16
Illegal Monuments: Memorials between Crime and State Endorsement
Nauskiaä El-Mecky
Chapter 17
Transnational Social Media Monuments, Counter Monuments, and the Future of the Nation-State
Johnny Alam
Section 6: Monument Culture: Strategies and Actions
Chapter 18
Citizens as Walking Memorials: Rethinking the Monument Genre in the 21st Century
Tanja Schult
Chapter 19
Exhibiting Spectacle and Recasting Memory: Commemorating the First World War in New Zealand
Kingsley Baird
Chapter 20
Dealing with a Dictatorial Past: Fascist Monuments and Conflicting Memory in Contemporary Italy
Flaminia Bartolini
Chapter 21
Avoiding Iconoclasm: How the Counter-Monument Could Settle a Monumental Debate
Scott McDonald
Section 7: Monument Culture Closing Essay
Chapter 22
On Creating a Useable Future: An Introduction to Future Monuments
Evander Price
Ultimately, Monument Culture makes a strong intervention on the growing scholarly literature and media coverage related to monuments. This intervention is particularly welcome as the approach is truly international in scope, emphasizing the global nature of this culture and its complexities in diverse contexts across seven continents. This volume will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of cultural heritage studies, museum studies, library and information science, history, art and architecture. It should also be of value to individuals concerned with or working in public policy arenas, particularly policies pertaining to public space and culture.
Monument Culture makes a valuable contribution that moves beyond the superficial debates around “do monuments teach us history.” For public historians seeking to engage with monuments and public commemoration, the book offers an excellent opportunity to consider this issue from a range of perspectives
A public historian and scholar of art and culture, Macaluso presents global perspectives on the meaning and use of monuments and memorials and the broader categorization of monument culture and its shifting terrain internationally. The book’s 20 essays address monuments in terms of landscape, people, and sense of place; trauma and violence/reconciliation and reparation; migration and identity; the practice of monuments (away from the built environment and toward installations, ephemera, and social media); and controversy and difficult histories. Many contributions, along with the opening and closing essays, overlap in addressing these five themes and thereby demonstrate how contemporary monument culture is concerned universally with constructions of identity, community, and history. Varied in methodology, literary style, and disciplinary approach, the essays bring together scholarship and artistic and social practice from seven continents and a number of academic fields. Offering brief, thoughtful, and enriching case studies that demonstrate the possibilities of an informed understanding of monuments yesterday, today, and tomorrow, Monument Culture will interest students and scholars of history, public history, public art, and engaged social practice as well as those in the cultural heritage sector.
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.
Countering this are signs of a growing sense of transnational solidarity directed at promoting human rights in the present and correcting commemorative injustices. But these same forces can be used to advance very different causes. The so-called “good Fascism”, as Macaluso puts it, on offer in heritage-rich Italy resonates with Trump’s equivocal response to Charlottesville. . . And that’s precisely why we need books such as Monument Culture. Its many clever contributors help us prepare for that fateful day when the late, great Trump mutates from bile into bronze. For every person cheering his erection, someone else will be trying to tear it down. But, hey, that’ll be OK. After all, there are sure to be “very fine people on both sides”.
Macaluso’s Monument Culture features a wide-ranging, insightful group of essays that span the globe and illuminate one of the most critical issues of our time. From Antarctica to South Korea and beyond, this book is essential reading to understand how communities choose to remember and memorialize the contested past.
The authors in Monument Culture do not promise solutions to the conundrums posed by monuments in today’s world. Instead, you’ll find something much more challenging and enriching—a transnational survey of commemorative practices that will lead readers to question their beliefs about the cultural work of monuments.
Product Details
- Title : Monument Culture: International Perspectives on the Future of Monuments in a Changing World
- Author: Macaluso, Laura A.
- Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Publication Date: 2019
- ISBN: 9781538114162