Colston’s Travels, or Should We Talk About Statues?

E. Branscome
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Abstract

The toppling of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol on 7th June 2020, and its dispatch into the waters of the nearby harbour – a defiant act of protest by members of Britain’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – helped to raise international awareness that far too many statues and other artefacts within the urban realm carry troubling histories, even if their contentious associations might have been forgotten. Acting as quasi-Trojan horses, they can appear benign enough within their cultural landscapes while yet silently continuing to reinforce socio-economic inequalities. This essay investigates the incident in Bristol to offer a wider reassessment of those cultural legacies now seen as ‘difficult heritage’, particularly those associated with slave trading in the former British Empire. It looks at how the cultural value of the Colston statue, when viewed over time in relation to material and ideological conditions in Bristol as a declining port city, creates a real tension in their meaning today given that they so obviously represent a highly selective construction of local history. The increasingly vociferous demand globally for the removal of such sculptures, especially by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, exposes the ongoing evasiveness and indecisiveness of official bodies in dealing with such artefacts. While the final outcome of the toppling of the Colston statue remains in the balance in terms of its legal resolution, the role of urban art as part of activism and protest clearly demands more attention. This essay traces the emergence of debates about ‘difficult heritage’ as a combination of social performance and civil disobedience. As this kind of struggle continues, the urgent questions become who should be allowed to determine what is considered history and how should it be displayed in our urban public spaces?
科尔斯顿的旅行,还是我们应该谈论雕像?
2020年6月7日,奴隶贩子爱德华·科尔斯顿的雕像在布里斯托尔被推倒,并被扔进附近港口的水域——这是英国“黑人的命也是命”运动成员的一种反抗行为——有助于提高国际意识,即城市领域中有太多雕像和其他文物带有令人不安的历史,即使它们有争议的联系可能已经被遗忘了。他们就像准特洛伊木马一样,在他们的文化景观中表现得足够温和,但却默默地继续加剧社会经济不平等。本文调查了布里斯托尔事件,对那些现在被视为“困难遗产”的文化遗产,特别是那些与前大英帝国的奴隶贸易有关的文化遗产,进行了更广泛的重新评估。它着眼于科尔斯顿雕像的文化价值,当随着时间的推移,与布里斯托尔作为一个衰落的港口城市的物质和意识形态条件相联系时,如何在它们今天的意义上创造出真正的张力,因为它们如此明显地代表了当地历史的高度选择性构建。全球范围内要求移除此类雕塑的呼声日益高涨,尤其是“黑人的命也是命”运动,这暴露出官方机构在处理此类艺术品时的闪烁其词和优柔寡断。虽然推倒科尔斯顿雕像的最终结果在法律解决方面仍处于平衡状态,但城市艺术作为行动主义和抗议活动的一部分,显然需要更多的关注。这篇文章追溯了关于“困难遗产”作为社会表现和公民不服从的结合的辩论的出现。随着这种斗争的继续,迫切的问题变成了谁应该被允许决定什么是历史,以及它应该如何在我们的城市公共空间中展示?
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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