Suffocation, Monuments, and Memento: Political Imagination and Aesthetic Intervention in Dissidence

Asfixia, monumentos y memento: imaginación política e intervención estética en disidencia

This article looks critically at knocking down statues in the current conjuncture, where the discussion about the value of lives has become central to any political mobilization in the aftermath of the Floyd case. We go through a series of knocking down and re[1]building processes, as well as some criticism of monument shifting, by situating political imagination, intervention in history, and void positioning as memento mori, in contrast with prevailing history. Thus, a differentiation is outlined between the different authorities of the cultural apparatus —both artists and institutions, and political representatives— and their counterparts from vernacular resistance practices. The analysis reconstructs three instances, namely, colonial pedagogy of extermination; responses from authorities governing ideologies in vernacular culture, and poetries in overt political criticism, looking at examples across the United States, England, France —both metropolitan and Caribbean—, and Colombia.