Mihaela Mihai on the tension between some public art and the commitments of a liberal democrac

Mihai, Mihaela

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Monumental Legacies and Symbolic HumiliationMihaela Mihai on  the tension between some public art and the commitments of a liberaldemocracyAs the recent controversies surrounding Cecil Rhodes statues in South Africa and the UK haveshown, public constructions attest to political regimes’ desire to imprint their version of history onthe country’s landscape and, more importantly, on the memory of citizens. Statues, memorials,and monuments set in stone a certain view of the past, usually in glorious and heroic terms.Hierarchies of all kinds (political, social, racial, gendered) are reﬂected in—and reproducedthrough—public art, one of the many ‘voices’ through which the state speaks. What is celebratedor commemorated is as signiﬁcant as what is forgotten: defeats, reprehensible deeds by thenation, as well as marginalized groups are usually omitted from the material representation of theofﬁcial story.In this short intervention, I advance the following argument: condoning public monuments thatsymbolically humiliate certain groups is normatively inconsistent for a liberal democracy. Suchmonuments sit uneasily with the egalitarian theory of moral worth that liberal democracypresupposes, and therefore require that we take measures of redress.Before we discuss alternative courses of action, it is important to clarify what we mean by symbolichumiliation. Christian Neuhäuser tells us that it occurs when a symbol of the group is deﬁled andthe deﬁling ‘is connected to past humiliations or the threat of present humiliations’. DestroyingJewish cemeteries and showing abasing portraits of gays on TV are two examples. If the symbolicact expresses an exclusionary attitude, if it shows that less respect and concern is owed to certainindividuals, and if there is a possibility that the members of the group will face threats by virtue ofbelonging to that group, then we are witnessing symbolic group humiliation.I propose here that humiliation is perpetuated if successor states leave unaddressed—or continueto sponsor—monuments, memorials, and other public buildings inherited from the past,monuments that populate a polity’s space and transmit a message about (some) citizens’inferiority. Public constructions that contradict moral egalitarianism endanger the normativeintegrity of a liberal democracy. Representing certain groups as less than human, glorifying formervictimizers, or excluding the members of marginalized groups from monuments are just three ofthe ways in which public constructions can symbolically humiliate citizens.So what is to be done? Several alternatives present themselves.Leaving the monument as it is could be a tempting proposal for a state aiming to cultivate aplurivocal ‘sacred space’, where different and diverging visions of the past can be expressed.Given the contestable character of all ‘ofﬁcial stories’, it has been argued that a diverse landscapeof competing narratives might be a better solution. While I ﬁnd the idea of a plural public spacepowerful, the versions of the past competing for admission can be radically different in terms oftheir compatibility with the ideal of equal respect for all. Given the commitment to this ideal, itwould be contradictory to opt for an unrestricted policy of ‘let a thousand ﬂowers bloom’. Someﬂowers can poison the democratic public space with their scent. In other words, monuments thatsymbolically humiliate citizens by relegating them to a subordinate position are problematic.Leaving the monument as it is, or adding a plaque that afﬁrms the state’s neutrality towards thenarrative the monument presents, are two courses of action in tension with the fact that liberaldemocracy is a normative, political, and cultural regime seeking to reproduce itself acrossgenerations. Once we admit the partisanship of liberal democracy, we understand that not all waysof relating to the past are compatible with its values. An attitude of ‘anything goes’ establishes aproblematic equivalence between inclusive and exclusive, racist and respectful, totalitarian anddemocratic ways of looking at past events.Naturally, deciding which monument belongs to which category is a complex process that requirescontextualized judgement. However, a good starting point is to think about whether themonuments under consideration could symbolically humiliate certain groups by telling a storyabout their inferiority or by misrepresenting their contribution to the political past of the nation. Ifthat is the case, then a plaque whereby the state distances itself from such problematicunderstandings of social relations is the least authorities can do to afﬁrm the state’s equal concernand respect for all citizens. A sign that explicitly condemns past abuses is an even better way ofmarking discontinuity with the violations of the previous regime.Building an alternative or counter-monument can be compatible with the normative integrity of aliberal democracy as long as the state explicitly addresses the reasoning behind the newconstruction. Only in this way can a problematic normative equivalence between the twomonuments be avoided and relativist positions on the past discouraged. The same goes forallowing various groups—both of victims and victimizers—to build a multitude of monuments. Theplurivocality of the public space does not make the need for a public disavowal of humiliatingsymbols redundant.‘Museumiﬁcation’ can go a long way in ensuring that material gloriﬁcations of the past do notcontinue to humiliate certain groups. Changing the lenses through which we look at suchconstructions can allow contextualization, a more complex understanding, and even historicallearning. However, museumiﬁcation is not as easy as it sounds. The burden is on curators topresent the monument in a way that prevents the museum becoming a place where some arehumiliated, while others feed their discriminatory views.Re-writing the text on the monument is yet another solution, which depends on the interpretivemalleability of the monument, clearly a matter of degree. Some monuments can be more easilyappropriated by a democratic regime than others. Should the monument allow for multiplereadings, changing the text could be a productive avenue, one that nonetheless requires creativityand careful judgement.Last but not least, destroying the monument. It has been argued that some monuments are soMonday, 25 January 2016infamous because of their association with a history of atrocity that it is obvious they should bedestroyed. However, I would like to propose that, should the state choose such a solution, animportant didactic opportunity might be lost. Rather than razing the monument—and thus risking abacklash form those enamoured with the narrative the monument tells—it might be better tochoose from the options discussed above one that clearly disavows political oppression andreafﬁrms the commitment to ﬁght against the political, economic, and symbolic exclusion ofanybody from the scope of liberal principles.Mihaela Mihai is Senior Research Fellow in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh. Thispost is based on her paper ‘Democratic “Sacred Spaces”: Public Architecture and TransitionalJustice’, published in Theorizing Transitional Justice, edited by Nir Eisikovitz, Claudio Corradetti,and Jack Volpe Rotondi . Her research interests include the politics of memory and theories ofoppression, and cut across political theory, political science and law. She is currently the principalinvestigator of an European Research Council Starting Grant, entitled  ‘Illuminating the “GreyZone”: Addressing Complex Complicity in Human Rights Violations’.Image credits: (L-R) 1. Godot13, ‘SPA-2014-San Lorenzo de El Escorial-Valley of the Fallen (Vallede los Caídos)’; 2. John Walker, ‘Voortrekker Monument’; 3. Gary Houston, ‘Statue Leopold IIOstende’.

Monumental legacies and symbolic humiliation

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