Those random snapshots from Paris also encapsulate the three broad approaches to problematic statues and monuments: leave them up, tear them down or modify them. Statues are not a neutral narration of complex events. That’s particularly true of monuments to events, including American slavery and European colonialism, that took place, historically speaking, yesterday. Tell a black teenager who has to walk past a statue of Robert E Lee in Richmond, Virginia, that it’s all in the past. The French historian Pierra Nora popularised the concept of “sites of memory” to describe the symbolic components – museums, monuments, events, flags or artworks – of a community’s shared experience.

Source: The Irish Times June 13, 2020 00:00 UTC