Often the so-call ‘universalism’ of France has an unpleasant flavor of ‘white communitarianism’. The “iconoclastic fury” that is currently spreading through cities on a global scale demands, as its ancestors demand, new rules of tolerance and coexistence. Far from erasing the past, anti-racist iconoclasm entails a new historical consciousness that inevitably affects the urban landscape. The disput statues celebratethe past and its actors, a simple fact that legitimizes its withdrawal. Cities are living bodies that change according to the nes, values and desires of their inhabitants, and these transformations are always the result of political and cultural conflicts.
Tearing down monuments commemorating
Past rulers lends a historical dimension to present-day struggles against racism and oppression. Perhaps it means even more than that. It is another way of opposing the gentrification of our cities, which involves the metamorphosis of their historic districts into Australia Phone Number List reifi and fetishiz places. Once a city is classifi by the Unit Nations ucational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) as a “World Heritage Site”, it is doom to die. The “barbarians” who topple statues are implicitly protesting current neoliberal policies which, while driving the lower classes out of urban centers, transform the latter into frozen remnants. The symbols of ancient slavery and colonialism are combin with the glaring face of real estate capitalism, and these are the targets of the protesters.
The look of the vanquish Anti-racist iconoclasm
According to a more sophisticat and perverse argument, expresses an unconscious desire to deny the past. According to this argument, no matter how oppressive and unpleasant the past was, it cannot be chang. This is of course true. But going B2C Database through the past, particularly if it is a past full of racism, slavery, colonialism and genocide, does not mean celebrating it, as most of the toppl statues come to do. In Germany, the Nazi past is overwhelmingly present in city squares and streets through memorials that celebrate its victims and not its perpetrators. In Berlin, the Holocaust Memorial stands as a warning to future generations ( das Mahnmal ). SS crimes are remember.
