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This book undertakes a critical examination of monuments, heritage, and memory, analysing their intersections with colonial histories, gender dynamics, and class structures. By challenging conventional conceptions of monuments, memory, and heritage, this work advocates for a materialist approach that rigorously critiques hegemonic and authorised discourses. It seeks to reconceptualise these phenomena by proposing alternative paradigms and radical practices that offer new perspectives on their construction, preservation, and interpretation.
The volume is structured into two primary sections: a theoretical component that develops a materialist critique of the subject, alongside innovative frameworks for its reinterpretation, and an empirical component grounded in concrete experiences derived from radical practices involving the construction, preservation, and demolition of monuments. Situated within contemporary debates surrounding the future of monuments and the ongoing culture wars, Redefining Monuments provides an indispensable resource for scholars and readers invested in counter-hegemonic interpretations of monuments. The work aims to advance the development of a materialist theory and methodology for understanding memory and heritage, offering a critical contribution to these fields.
List of contents
Chapter 1: The radical redefinition of monuments.- Chapter 2: The ideological conquest of history; Or what people do when they erect, demolish and occupy monuments.- Chapter 3: The Stones of Politics.- Chapter 4: Statues of enslavers and their role in the culture wars.- Chapter 5: Materialist Approaches to Monument-Making in Socialist Yugoslavia.- Chapter 6: Counter monuments and the ideology of memory.- Chapter 7: Contributions to a materialist critique of cultural heritage.- Chapter 8: For Marxist Intersectional Memory Studies.- Chapter 9: The landscape of memories of the Pan-American highway in Chile.- Chapter 10: Leninplatz, an unpleasant corpse.- Chapter 11: Perplexity and ambivalence: Making sense of the people s relationship to the Joshua Nkomo statue in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.- Chapter 12: Institutional and Non-institutional Monuments as Reflections of Political Antagonisms in Athens.- Chapter 13: Toxic Monuments in Spain.- Chapter 14: The Berlin Wall: an unintentional anti-fascist monument.- Chapter 15: Preliminary notes for a theory of iconoclasm as a mechanism of ideological recognition.
About the author
Daniel Palacios González is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at UNED, UK and previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He holds a PhD in Art History from the Universität zu Köln, Germany, where he was an MSCA Fellow. He is the author of Making Monuments from Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain (2024) and De fosas comunes a lugares de memoria (2022), which received the Memory Studies Association First Book Award in 2023. He is a member of the research project NECROPOL at the Universitat de Barcelona.
José María Durán Medraño currently teaches Cultural Studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, Germany. He holds a PhD in Art History from the UNED and in Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His publications include the books La crítica de la economía política del arte (2015) and Iconoclasia, historia del arte y lucha de clases (2009). He is a member of the research Project PERMORIA at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.
Summary
This book undertakes a critical examination of monuments, heritage, and memory, analysing their intersections with colonial histories, gender dynamics, and class structures. By challenging conventional conceptions of monuments, memory, and heritage, this work advocates for a materialist approach that rigorously critiques hegemonic and authorised discourses. It seeks to reconceptualise these phenomena by proposing alternative paradigms and radical practices that offer new perspectives on their construction, preservation, and interpretation.
The volume is structured into two primary sections: a theoretical component that develops a materialist critique of the subject, alongside innovative frameworks for its reinterpretation, and an empirical component grounded in concrete experiences derived from radical practices involving the construction, preservation, and demolition of monuments. Situated within contemporary debates surrounding the future of monuments and the ongoing culture wars, Redefining Monuments provides an indispensable resource for scholars and readers invested in counter-hegemonic interpretations of monuments. The work aims to advance the development of a materialist theory and methodology for understanding memory and heritage, offering a critical contribution to these fields.
