Year: 2023

While monuments are not history, they can and should be held accountable to history. Monuments that perpetuate harmful myths and that portray conquest and oppression as acts of valour require honest reckoning, conceptual dismantling, and active repair. National Monument Audit – Monument Lab (page 27) If we are to hold monuments accountable to history, then…

Monuments offer interpretations of the past and play an outsize role in shaping historical narratives and shared memory. In the service of remembering the preferred narratives of their creators, they also can erase, deny, or belittle the historical experience of those who have not had the civic power or privilege to build them. Where inequalities…

Colonization is a process that replaces indigenous peoples’ culture with those of the colonizer and puts in place institutions and mechanisms to perpetuate it. Colonization is not simply an act of taking over physical territory, it is also an act of taking over the mind. War Memorials, Sonneberg Germany It takes over the mind by…

It is often the purpose of monuments to celebrate successes, and in doing so, to bring together the community. The issue with some is they present a single, positive narrative, and leave unsaid any negative consequences for other members of the community. Such omissions are often hurtful to those who were on the receiving end…

What is an explanation for our different interpretations of events? Why were once acceptable things now unacceptable? A key change might be broadly encapsulated in the shift from “Universality” to the more “Contextual”; the shift from a focus on universal principles to a more context-sensitive approach in ethical theories. This can be seen as reflective…