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Identities 30th Anniversary Lecture Series

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What future for toppled statues?

Toppling a monumental, public statue may be powerful, cathartic, or even jarring for those who witness it. As sites of memory and public art, statues are imposing, apparently permanent figures that claim a prominent place in both urban space and collective memory. Toppling these statues overthrows the appearance of stability and authority. It is at least partly because this act was so visually striking that images of cultural activists toppling statues were among the most iconic symbols of the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the globe in the summer of 2020....

In public debates, Muslims in the West are often presented and perceived as the dangerous Other opposing democracy and Western values, situating them as outsiders to the nation. Consequently, Muslim minorities frequently find themselves grappling with multifaceted forms of marginalization and exclusion. This marginalization has been exacerbated by the success of radical right parties in the European countries, which often promote anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, further entrenching prejudice and exclusion....

‘It is this fact of locomotion, as I have said, that defines the very nature of society’: this is what sociologist Robert Park said exactly a century ago, seeing mobility as the characteristic and founding feature of humanity. It is no coincidence that the book in which he makes these considerations is titled ‘the City’ and brings together a set of essays on urban life. If people move naturally, at some point they also need to come to the – provisional – end of their journeys. To stop, at least for a moment, and to take root....