I'm a historian. I follow a lot of historians on Twitter.
I've yet to find a single historian angry about statues being torn down.
(Book burning, though...or reducing funding to archives...that gets them hopping. Since that's an actual site of history loss). Statues? Nope.
I've yet to find a single historian angry about statues being torn down.
(Book burning, though...or reducing funding to archives...that gets them hopping. Since that's an actual site of history loss). Statues? Nope.
Let me explain. I have a new book out, about a person: Sylvia Fedoruk. (It's called A Radiant Life and a great place to find it is @McNallySK) It's entirely possible that an artist could be commissioned to create a statue of Sylvia. Great.
How much of Sylvia's life would you know or learn by reading the 3 sentence tablet affixed to the base of her statue? Not much, and not nearly enough. You can't encapsulate a life that way.
A statue serves as a marker, if you will. A physical reminder of a person who was important enough to warrant a statue, or a building named in their honour. Ok. Think of a statue as a really, really big and visible bookmark.
What does a bookmark do? It directs to a book -- where there is space to discuss detail, nuance, evidence, counterpoints. Multiple books usually, especially if the statue is a leading government figure and there has been time to process.
That's why a statue to a major government figure will elicit strong reactions, both in favour and in condemnation. Both are usually deserved. How do we know? Because of the *books*, not the statue, not the name on the street or building.
Statues are not history. They are the bookmarks asking us to remember and consider history. They are put up for reasons. They come down for reasons. Neither action creates or obliterates history.
PS. In our modern world, while I say books for ease of reference, history is debated and displayed in story, song, blogs, tweets, podcasts, long form journalism, journal articles, academia writ large, and books. And more.
But statues? Not so much.
But statues? Not so much.
To add: the rhetoric behind the anger of taking down a statue falls into two categories: it erases history, or, it's illegal/mob mentality/public destruction = bad. Both arguments sound true. That's their strength.
This thread refutes the first: statues are bookmarks of history, not history itself. The second is tough, as it can be argued that a public statue should have public consensus on its removal or change.
I can only say: the anger within Canada's Indigenous communities against JAM is real, based on solid historical evidence, displayed in generational systemic oppression. Toppling a few statues could easily be viewed as a tiny drop of balm trying to soothe an ocean of pain.
