- Andrew Hamilton
- 25 June 2020
The debate that has followed (and fuelled) the destruction of statues is pretty thin. It lacks awareness of the broad cultural strands interwoven in the issue. After a preliminary remark, I shall outline three large questions raised by statues and their destruction, and reflect on the larger history that illuminates the present debate.
The most evident aspect of burning, decapitating or drowning statues is that it is an expression of enthusiasm, and is enormously enjoyable for those who take part in it. It is a symbol of radical change, and channels anger at a resented past into joy at the inauguration of a new age. Images of the Russian Revolution and of the collapse of the Soviet Empire alike are full of defaced paintings and the dethroning of statues of rulers. Unfortunately, common to all such events, is the subsequent realisation that with the coming of a new world, life does not automatically change for the better.
The larger questions posed by the destruction of the statues, and indeed of reputations, that they symbolise, concern how to handle complexity. First, historical complexity. Statues destroyed are almost always of a past age when commonly shared attitudes to society and to human aspirations differed from those of our own. Those past attitudes and the economic and political structures in which they were embodied, however, have helped shape our own world, and so are inherited both by those who call for something radically new and by those opposed to change.
Of their nature statues of the past confront us with complexity and ambiguity. Knocking their heads off does not make a society more simple, though it may lead to desired change by forcing us to ask whether the attitudes and actions of our ancestors were morally defensible as well as understandable. Asking that question of the past is awkward because it pushes us inescapably to ask it also of our own actions, attitudes and inheritance.
Second, the question of human complexity. Statues represent, even in their idealised shape, real people marked by a mixture of good and bad desires, of good and evil actions, of light and darkness, strength and weakness, and of ignorance and knowledge. In public life they will inevitably have endorsed or acquiesced in actions that harmed groups in society. Details of their private lives and relationships, once concealed, may also now be known. This fuller knowledge forces us to ask whether we accept our own complexity and ambiguity or reject them.
If we reject them we might then demand that only people with attitudes identical with ours and innocent of actions that we abhor be honoured, and that the guilty be excised from memory and public recognition. The catch is that by drowning statues in muddy waters and by excluding sinners from our society, we claim that we ourselves have kept our white baptismal robes unstained. That claim lays a heavy burden on us.
'The deeper questions raised by this history concern who decides the shape of the ideal society, and what place have those who are excluded from it.'
Third, the question of social complexity. Each statue and memorial embody a network of relationships to other people, to groups in society, to hierarchies and to historical events. Together they form an image of society rich in its complexity and its tensions, marked by what it omits as well as by what it includes. They ask us whether we want a society in which groups with different attitudes and histories coexist with all the tensions that this involves, or whether we exclude and write out of our history many of those relationships.
If we wish to preserve complexity, we must then deal with the exclusions evident in the memorials left by our ancestors. We can do that by removing statues, adding memorials of people neglected, or relocating statues to another venue with appropriate historical context, like a museum. Whatever we do, the prior and urgent question is whether we are committed to build new relationships based in truth.
It is often claimed that the destruction is alien to our culture, a return to barbarism. In fact, it is a recurrent theme many cultures. It goes back to the exclusive claim made for the God of Israel as beyond imaging, and so excluding images of other Gods. The fate of the Golden Calf which Moses melted down, ground to dust, and forced its worshipers to eat was emblematic. Christians took up this polemic against images of Gods, as later did Muslims, but it was modified by their belief that Jesus was the image of God in flesh. Images of Christ as the Son of God and of other Christian figures became accepted.
The strictures against images, however, remained strong, and led to a bitterly resisted campaign by Christian Emperors in the East to eradicate images. The making of images was vindicated, but was set within the context of prayer and regulated in detail, so that attention was drawn to God who was seen to communicate through the image, and not to the image itself.
In the Medieval West images were multiplied and humanised, so that Churches brought together heaven and earth through the images of Christ, Mary, angels, saints and members of the congregation, both saints and sinners. In the face of this world which they saw as corrupt, Reformers returned to an imagined simplicity and emphasised the hearing of God’s word and obedience to it. Reform was often accompanied by the destruction of images and austere churches.
Images then became secular, and statues represented citizens and churchmen responsible for building a good society. They symbolised and protected the values and ideals of society. When society was seen as corrupt, however, the symbols also came under attack, as in the French and Russian revolutions and in the overthrow of the Soviet Empire.
The deeper questions raised by this history concern who decides the shape of the ideal society, and what place have those who are excluded from it. In Australia the current debate about statues touches much more searching questions about the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia, the moral legitimacy of their dispossession and exclusion, and their agency in shaping a more just order. It is much easier to natter about statues than to engage seriously with Indigenous people about them.
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