Colstonic Irrigation
Jun. 10th, 2020 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholm"History is ghastly. Nothing but misery and war and brutality. One should be glad it’s over."
Thus Clare Paling, the protagonist of Penelope Lively's Judgement Day. She is being sarcastic, and Lively ironic - for both are historians, and know better.
But I thought of that line when I heard some of the protestations against the removal of Colston's statue on the grounds that it was "erasing history." First, since we're in ironic mode, there's the rich irony that most of the bewailers had never heard of Edward Colston four days ago, despite his statue having stood in brazen pomp for 125 years; but in the few days since there has been no statue they have learned all about him. It's as if human beings invest such objects with meaning by their actions and passions - as if the removal of statuary can be more educational than statues themselves! Who knew?
The second irony is that erasing history, at least in this way, turns out to be synonymous with making it - for Sunday's events are now indelibly part of Bristol's history, to the extent that Banksy has suggested erecting a statue of the protestors pulling Colston's statue down.
History isn't a done deal. That's the lesson people are learning, along with the statistics of enslaved, the drowned, the murdered. If you don't like the history you've got, you can always make some more.
Thus Clare Paling, the protagonist of Penelope Lively's Judgement Day. She is being sarcastic, and Lively ironic - for both are historians, and know better.
But I thought of that line when I heard some of the protestations against the removal of Colston's statue on the grounds that it was "erasing history." First, since we're in ironic mode, there's the rich irony that most of the bewailers had never heard of Edward Colston four days ago, despite his statue having stood in brazen pomp for 125 years; but in the few days since there has been no statue they have learned all about him. It's as if human beings invest such objects with meaning by their actions and passions - as if the removal of statuary can be more educational than statues themselves! Who knew?
The second irony is that erasing history, at least in this way, turns out to be synonymous with making it - for Sunday's events are now indelibly part of Bristol's history, to the extent that Banksy has suggested erecting a statue of the protestors pulling Colston's statue down.
History isn't a done deal. That's the lesson people are learning, along with the statistics of enslaved, the drowned, the murdered. If you don't like the history you've got, you can always make some more.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-10 04:34 pm (UTC)And they learned a lot!
That said, I take exception the the idiocy that just took place in Leeds. Those people DO need to go away and learn some history!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-10 06:31 pm (UTC)Well, I can't say where it will end, but where it is at present various people pointing out that the statue under consideration is of William Gladstone, it's in Albert Square, and it's not just that his family "had links" to the slave trade (though his father was probably the biggest slave owner in the West Indies, and Dad's money funded Gladstone's political career, with all that entailed) his maiden speech was opposing the 1833 Emancipation Act and in 1861 he jumped the gun at a speech in Newcastle (when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer) using the phrase "And what is more, they have made a nation" about the Confederacy, at a time when the British Empire was very carefully NOT recognising them as a sovereign state.
So if the protestors can't keep two PMs straight, then their statues aren't teaching them much.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-10 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-11 09:50 am (UTC)I've been on a high about this for days....