THE ONGOING CONTROVERSY OVER CONFEDERATE statues, which has seen these monuments removed from public spaces in more than a dozen locations in the past couple years, is the renewal of a historical tradition that has been going on for as long as humans have erected such monuments: the symbolic removal and recontextualization of artifacts from the past that are no longer relevant or welcome.Putting aside antiquity, in the recent past, this has included the removal of statues of a seemingly endless march of former leaders, all over the world: Alberto Stroessner, Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Chiang Kei-shek, Saparmurat Niyazov, Hafez al-Assad, Hosni Mubarak, Enver Hoxha, Saddam Hussein, and more. Some of these statues are destroyed—symbolically, even ritually—but others are relocated, as is the case with most Confederate statues today.Sometimes statues are collected in one place, where the immortalized fallen crowd together in awkward silence, historical repositories of different eras. Take the “Garden of the Generalissimos” in Cihu, Taiwan, where scores of Chiang Kai-shek statues sit together, regarding one another. The statues are some of the thousands on the island—a controversial legacy of the late leader of the Republic of China (not to be confused with the modern mainland People’s Republic of China).
Recent Posts
- Mickey Mouse will be public domain soon—here’s what that means
- Google’s New Fuchsia OS to Support Android Apps
- Mastercard and Microsoft Conspire to Control All Our Data
- Organizers cancel Women’s March Jan. 19 due to ‘overwhelmingly white’ participants
- Sex robots with real brains could be granted human rights
- Google wins U.S. approval for radar-based hand motion sensor
- The oral history of the Hampsterdance: The twisted true story of one of the world’s first memes
- What Is Shadowbanning and Could It Happen to You?
- A 5-Foot Tapeworm Grew Inside a Man Because He Ate Too Much Raw Salmon
- Wellness Guru Calls Looking Directly at the Sun a “Form of Free Medicine”
Archives
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015