De-commemoration is a social phenomenon that regards the destruction or profound modification of material representations of the past in public space, representing the opposite or undoing of memorialization. The precise term was coined by Israeli historian Guy Beiner in 2018. [1] [2]
De-commemoration is the set of “processes in which material and public representations of the past are removed, destroyed or fundamentally modified”. [1] Guy Beiner introduced the concept of de-commemorating in reference to hostility towards acts of commemoration that can result in violent assaults and in iconoclastic defacement or destruction of monuments. Beiner's studies suggested that rather than stamping out memorialization and giving an impression of freedom from the past, de-commemorating can paradoxically function as a form of ambiguous remembrance, sustaining interest in controversial memorials. [2] The very dishonor that damage or removal brings to the memorial gives it back its importance in a distinct way juxtaposed to commemorative plaques, statues, and monuments that recall the past in public spaces that are very often ignored in everyday life. [3] [4] Destruction of monuments can also trigger renewed acts of memorialization (which Beiner labelled "re-commemorating"). [2]
According to the framework of sociologists Tracy Adams and Yinon Guttel-Klei, three types of practices can be identified related to the phenomenon. The most widespread is desacralization, that is, desecration and destruction of the monument. [5] The second practice is reframing, which consists of showing the controversial past by recontextualizing the memorial or giving it a new meaning. In practice, this can involve adding explanatory plaques or renaming memorial spaces and streets, thus changing the status and symbolism of monuments or landscapes. [6] The third practice, planned obsolescence, is rarer and refers to monuments deliberately built with a limited lifespan in order to criticize real established monuments or they are installed to spark controversy and thus provoke their demolition. [7]
De-commemoration is not a recent social phenomenon, [8] and has involved five different approaches in historical examples according to a framework set by Sarah Gensburger and Jenny Wüstenberg. [9] It can be the result of a change in political regime and then aims to adapt the symbolic landscape. This is the case, for example, in France after the First Empire, in colonized countries after their independence, or after the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. [10]
De-commemoration can also be linked to a societal transformation that makes monuments or place names appear anachronistic, for example by trying to reduce the over-representation of male statues or street names, or in New Zealand by making room for memorials to Maori people, history, and culture. [11] It can also result from forceful action, from a mobilization that directly aims to provoke changes in the memorial landscape. This is the type of de-commemoration, such as that carried out during and following the Black Lives Matter movement, or in Latin American countries confronted with the legacy of colonialism, or in European ports regarding the Atlantic slave trade. This type of de-commemoration is often the kind that is most spread and documented in mass media, in particular regarding the decolonization of public spaces. [12]
De-commemoration can also sometimes act as a smokescreen, a maneuver by those in charge to prevent political change or to sidestep a debate on the past, as in postcolonial Namibia. [13] Finally, it leads, more rarely, to a transformation in the way of thinking about memory, to reconsidering commemoration itself. This rarely happens because the tendency is to replace the destroyed monument with another of different meaning but of the same type. However, de-commemoration also leads to questioning and modifying the legislative frameworks of memorial uses and sometimes to resorting to new technological tools with how memorials are conceived, created, and interpreted. [14]
Iconoclasm is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts, a term that has come to be figuratively applied to any individual who challenges "cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious."
Damnatio memoriae is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory" or "damnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. Depending on the extent, it can be a case of historical negationism. There are and have been many routes to damnatio memoriae, including the destruction of depictions, the removal of names from inscriptions and documents, and even large-scale rewritings of history. The term can be applied to other instances of official scrubbing. The practice has been seen as early as the Egyptian New Kingdom period, where the Pharaohs Hatshepsut and Akhenaten were subject to it.
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, historical, political, technical or architectural importance. Examples of monuments include statues, (war) memorials, historical buildings, archaeological sites, and cultural assets. If there is a public interest in its preservation, a monument can for example be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict gives the next definition of monument:
Monuments result from social practices of construction or conservation of material artifacts through which the ideology of their promoters is manifested. The concept of the modern monument emerged with the development of capital and the nation-state in the fifteenth century when the ruling classes began to build and conserve what were termed monuments. These practices proliferated significantly in the nineteenth century, creating the ideological frameworks for their conservation as a universal humanist duty. The twentieth century has marked a movement toward some monuments being conceived as cultural heritage in the form of remains to be preserved, and concerning commemorative monuments, there has been a shift toward the abstract counter monument. In both cases, their conflictive nature is explicit in the need for their conservation, given that a fundamental component of state action following the construction or declaration of monuments is litigating vandalism and iconoclasm. However, not all monuments represent the interests of nation-states and the ruling classes; their forms are also employed beyond Western borders and by social movements as part of subversive practices which use monuments as a means of expression, where forms previously exclusive to European elites are used by new social groups or for generating anti-monumental artifacts that directly challenge the state and the ruling classes. In conflicts, therefore, it is not so much the monument which is relevant but rather what happens to the communities that participate in its construction or destruction and their instigation of forms of social interaction.
The Place Vendôme, earlier known as the Place Louis-le-Grand, and also as the Place Internationale, is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the corners give the rectangular Place Vendôme the aspect of an octagon. The original Vendôme Column at the centre of the square was erected by Napoleon I to commemorate the Battle of Austerlitz; it was torn down on 16 May 1871, by decree of the Paris Commune, but subsequently re-erected and remains a prominent feature on the square today.
Monument Avenue is a tree-lined grassy mall dividing the eastbound and westbound traffic in Richmond, Virginia, originally named for its emblematic complex of structures honoring those who fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Between 1900 and 1925, Monument Avenue greatly expanded with architecturally significant houses, churches, and apartment buildings. Four of the bronze statues representing J. E. B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Matthew Fontaine Maury were removed from their memorial pedestals amidst civil unrest in July 2020. The Robert E. Lee monument was handled differently as it was owned by the Commonwealth, in contrast with the other monuments which were owned by the city. Dedicated in 1890, it was removed on September 8, 2021. All these monuments, including their pedestals, have now been removed completely from the Avenue. The last remaining statue on Monument Avenue is the Arthur Ashe Monument, memorializing the African-American tennis champion, dedicated in 1996.
The Place des Victoires is a circular square in central Paris, located a short distance northeast of the Palais-Royal and straddling the border between the 1st and the 2nd arrondissements. The Place des Victoires is at the confluence of six streets: the Rue de la Feuillade, Rue Vide-Gousset, Rue d'Aboukir, Rue Étienne-Marcel, Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs and Rue Catinat.
The Confederate War Memorial was a 65 foot (20 m)-high monument that pays tribute to soldiers and sailors from Texas who served with the Confederate States of America (CSA) during the American Civil War. The monument was dedicated in 1897, following the laying of its cornerstone the previous year. Originally located in Sullivan Park near downtown Dallas, Texas, United States, the monument was relocated in 1961 to the nearby Pioneer Park Cemetery in the Convention Center District, next to the Dallas Convention Center and Pioneer Plaza.
Aili Jõgi was an Estonian schoolgirl who on the night of 8 May 1946, together with her school friend Ageeda Paavel, blew up a Soviet War reburial monument : the preceding monument to the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn. She was born in Tallinn.
Decommunization in former communist states is the process of purging former communist high officials and eliminating communist symbols.
The Place des États-Unis is a public space in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France, about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the Place de l'Étoile and the Arc de Triomphe.
Nelson's Pillar was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, built in the centre of what was then Sackville Street in Dublin, Ireland. Completed in 1809 when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, it survived until March 1966, when it was severely damaged by explosives planted by Irish republicans. Its remnants were later destroyed by the Irish Army.
Memorialization generally refers to the process of preserving memories of people or events. It can be a form of address or petition, or a ceremony of remembrance or commemoration.
The demolition of monuments to Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine began during the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued on a smaller scale throughout the 1990s, primarily in some western towns of Ukraine. However, by 2013, most Lenin statues across Ukraine were still intact. During the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, the destruction of statues became widespread, a phenomenon that came to be popularly known as Leninopad, or Leninfall in English. The use of "-пад" being akin to English words suffixed with "fall" as in "waterfall" and "snowfall".
A lieu de mémoire is a physical place or object which acts as container of memory. They are thus a form of memorialisation related to collective memory, stating that certain places, objects or events can have special significance related to group's remembrance. It is a term used in heritage and collective memory studies popularised by the French historian Pierre Nora in his three-volume collection Les Lieux de Mémoire. Nora describes them as “complex things. At once natural and artificial, simple and ambiguous, concrete and abstract, they are lieux—places, sites, causes—in three senses—material, symbolic and functional”.
There are more than 160 Confederate monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America and associated figures that have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five of which have been since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors.
The Lenin Monument was a monument to Vladimir Lenin in East Berlin created by the Soviet Russian sculptor Nikolai Tomsky. It was inaugurated on April 19, 1970 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth. After German reunification, the district council of Friedrichshain voted for its removal despite demonstrations and petitions from neighborhood residents and preservationists. The demolition process began in November 1991, and by February 1992 the monument was completely dismantled and its fragments buried on the outskirts of Berlin. In 2015, the head of the statue was excavated, and since 2016 it has been on display at Berlin’s Spandau Citadel as part of a permanent exhibition of Berlin political monuments.
The demolition of monuments to dedicated to Russian poet and playwright Alexander Pushkin in Ukraine started during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has become a widespread phenomenon and dubbed by Ukrainians Pushkinopad, a pun literally translated as "Pushkinfall", akin to the "Leninfall" during the decommunization process. This wave of dismantling is part of the process of derussification in Ukraine.
Processes of decolonization in Ukraine began during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and accelerated during the Revolution of Dignity, the Russo-Ukrainian War and especially the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Iconoclasm played a significant role during the French Revolution, reflecting the broader social, political, and religious shifts of the time. This movement was fueled by revolutionaries with anti-monarchical sentiments who wished to destroy visual representations of the Catholic Church and the Ancien Régime. The early revolutionary period was characterized by growing social inequality, fueled by a heavy tax burden on peasants, who made up 80% of the French population in 1789. This was exacerbated by tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy, as well as the difficulty of tax reform. Iconoclastic acts during the French Revolution embodied a time that saw the systematic destruction and defacement of religious and royal symbols, cathedrals, manuscripts, and artworks. Iconoclasm took many forms during this period, acting as a symbolic rejection of the Ancien Régime and a direct attack on religious institutions and symbols, which were seen as key pillars of the Ancien Régime.