Dr. Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan, LL.M. (Maastricht University), Ph.D. (Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway)
-Lecturer in International Law, Griffith College
Introduction
The waves of the post-colonial discourse in the wake of racial injustice sparked by the killing of George Floyd have hit the shores of Galway. Calls became more vigorous in the recent days for the removal of the Spanish Arch Columbus Memorial. The toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, the removal of a statue in Belgium dedicated to King Leopold II, the removals of various confederate statues in the USA, the removal of a statue dedicated to Robert Milligan in London and various acts of self-justice against Columbus statues have compounded the calls.
The post-colonial Gretchenfrage is now: must Colombus fall?
Columbus, Galway and the New World
Legend holds that the Genovese explorer/coloniser Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo) visited the city of tribes in 1477. It is also held that during his stay in Galway, Columbus came and prayed in the St. Nicholas Collegiate Church. Columbus, eventually set sail from Spain to the Americas for his so-called discovery of the ‘New World’ in 1492 for the Spanish Crown. What followed was a large extinction of Native Americans through the encomienda system which Columbus had forced upon the native population. While the colonised had to provide labor and tribute, the colonists would give protection and education in exchange. Corroborated and guided by early international legal theorist Francisco de Vitoria, a proper government must be established over the Native Americans, as they were children who needed guidance by a guardian and an intervention by the Spanish was needed to be the agents of a natural law, as the Native Americans were subjected to such. As renowned international law scholar Antony Anghie has noted,[1] a certain newness dogma in the European colonialists’ eyes of the so-called new worlds of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, was a crucial point in history for scholars and government officials of that era, to reconfigure and reformulate international law to serve imperial ambitions.
In fact, the encomienda system was worst slavery and set the stage for the horrors of colonialism, which were about to follow: mass-scale killings, rape and diseases, resulting even in decimation the 10 % of the world’s population and causing global cooling. But above that and beyond: it was the erasure of identity. Yet, in 1992, the city of Genova in Italy, alleged birth city of the explorer/coloniser, gifted the Spanish Arch Memorial to the city of Galway. Meanwhile, the Monument was vandalised several times, last at the time of writing this blog post.
Public space and post-colonial discourse
Questions are pertinent when it comes to the commemoration and memory of colonial past in public space. To this end, Robert Aldrich asks important questions: ‘
‘Who ‘owns’ an individual or incident or part of the colonial record: the colonisers (and which ones) or the colonised? How can colonialism best be commemorated: do the old traditions of erecting monuments and putting up statues and mounting displays still work? Indeed, should colonialism be commemorated? What is the boundary between commemoration and celebration? How can local pride (or outrage) be reconciled (or should it be?) with divergent historical interpretations and political goals?
What we are indeed witnessing is a historical development of a larger context: Rhodes in 2015 in South Africa, removal of Confederate Statues in 2015 in the USA, removal of Statues in Canada in 2018. In fact, the way how commemorative landscapes have been often changed, were fundamental when they came with regime changes throughout history. Be it the Second World War, be it the fall of the the Nazi regime or be it the fall of the Soviet Union or be it the end of apartheid in South Africa: they led to significant changes to the memorial landscape. To this end, we are witnessing a larger debate on renaming Columbus Day in the Americas, for many years now. Insofar as there is one party ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ and local populace is uttering its disagreement just due to the political likening, then it is wrong and it is obvious to realise: the Irish share more with oppression and exploitation than any other people from the Global North. Only one who had had suffered at hands of oppression can truly understand the suffering of others peoples’ oppression. Solidarity in history is key to decipher the commonalities in tragedy. In the end, colonialism is a story of plunder, pillage and erasure of heritage. As Makau Mutua writes:
The colonisation of independent, non European lands by Europeans was therefore justified, whether it was through military conquest, fraud, or intimidation. Since colonisation was part of the manifest destiny of Europeans, and “good” for non-Europeans in any case, any method deployed in its pursuit was morally and legally just. Brutal force, including the most barbaric actions imaginable, was applied by Europeans in the furtherance of colonialism.
It is often argued by populace that the erasure of history will leave no education for coming generations. It is also argued that this memorial serves its purpose as a commemoration to persons to evaluate for themselves about the positives and negatives of Christopher Columbus’ ‘discovery’. But here is the intervention: we have turned blind to the normalities of the public space, we became accustomed to the spaces we inhabit and we stop seeing the injustices of history. The memorial we see has normalised the past: for the worse. The fact that only now -in 2020- 28 years after its construction by the Spanish Arch, there is an honest and reflective engagement with the past in the midst of global upheaval should make us uncomfortable: at the time the memorial was constructed, the country was far away from peace on the island, conflict was the result of colonialism. The Irish should be the first to realise: injustices are easier to defend and more difficult to see. In the end, those who deem a part of public space to be defended will decide of its value to public commemoration or reflection – not those who are most affected. The Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin is a stoic reminder to commemorate the victims first, and then to reflect upon the guilt of the evildoer. When a leftist splinter group of the IRA had destroyed the Nelson’s Pillar in the heart of Dublin, it was the expression of victory against an imperial humiliation which withheld the attacks. The public space had accepted it, allowed it be part of the collective memory of the Empire. Eventually, people turned a blind eye to it, due to its sheer scale of the monument of humiliation. Tyler Stiem states:
Facts matter, and the protests are, at bottom, about facts – the historical truth of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy, and the contemporary truth of the people they still marginalise. Without facts and without protest, the best we can hope for is that these systems and their legacies will continue to exert their insidious effect. At worst, they will be fully rehabilitated and weaponised. We are seeing this already in the resurgence of rightwing populism all over the world.
The memorials perpetuate a political use of memory, at the very root an abuse of such tied to the official history of colonial Empire, which sanitises the role of colonialism through its catharsis as harbinger of civilisation and modernisation. A statue, to this end, is nothing more than of validating machinery of colonial empire.
Conclusion:
What the public and the public space needs to revisit is the repressive erasure through colonial dispossession. Removing colonial statues is not undoing the horrors of colonialism and it is certainly not undoing the colonial conquest as such. But a restorative erasure of removing statues that echo colonial figures and their memory does restore dignity of the colonised. The fact that Columbus is glorified as a colonial hero and his visit to Galway is solely part of a larger narrative to intertwine him with local and national myth, stipulate Western supremacy and glorify imperialism is solely contributing to further humiliation of Native Americans.
Colonial statues and memorials are not only physical barriers to challenge decolonisation and reconciliation: they further perpetuate white supremacy in public spaces. The solution could be solidarity in common history, offering public space to empathise with those whose suffering are similar to the sentiments in history of oppression. A removal of the memory of colonial hegemony and superiority must be followed by the space offering to victims of oppression. The role of public space must be an infrastructure of resistance to hegemony. The late Tamil academic and intellectual, A. Sivanandan, said once: ‘We are here, because you were there.’ In the end, the presence of colonial memorial is the negation of the colonised and their descendants. The reflection of public memory in favour of the oppressed rather than the oppressor is the true contribution to the Irish public space.
[1] Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) at 13-28.
Guest blog: Dr. Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan, LL.M. (Maastricht University), Ph.D. (Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway), -Lecturer in International Law-
Griffith College
Introduction
The waves of the post-colonial discourse in the wake of racial injustice sparked by the killing of George Floyd have hit the shores of Galway. Calls became more vigorous in the recent days for the removal of the Spanish Arch Columbus Memorial. The toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, the removal of a statue in Belgium dedicated to King Leopold II, the removals of various confederate statues in the USA, the removal of a statue dedicated to Robert Milligan in London and various acts of self-justice against Columbus statues have compounded the calls.
The post-colonial Gretchenfrage is now: must Colombus fall?
Columbus, Galway and the New World
Legend holds that the Genovese explorer/coloniser Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo) visited the city of tribes in 1477. It is also held that during his stay in Galway, Columbus came and prayed in the St. Nicholas Collegiate Church. Columbus, eventually set sail from Spain to the Americas for his so-called discovery of the ‘New World’ in 1492 for the Spanish Crown. What followed was a large extinction of Native Americans through the encomienda system which Columbus had forced upon the native population. While the colonised had to provide labor and tribute, the colonists would give protection and education in exchange. Corroborated and guided by early international legal theorist Francisco de Vitoria, a proper government must be established over the Native Americans, as they were children who needed guidance by a guardian and an intervention by the Spanish was needed to be the agents of a natural law, as the Native Americans were subjected to such. As renowned international law scholar Antony Anghie has noted,[1] a certain newness dogma in the European colonialists’ eyes of the so-called new worlds of the Americas, Africa, and Asia, was a crucial point in history for scholars and government officials of that era, to reconfigure and reformulate international law to serve imperial ambitions.
In fact, the encomienda system was worst slavery and set the stage for the horrors of colonialism, which were about to follow: mass-scale killings, rape and diseases, resulting even in decimation the 10 % of the world’s population and causing global cooling. But above that and beyond: it was the erasure of identity. Yet, in 1992, the city of Genova in Italy, alleged birth city of the explorer/coloniser, gifted the Spanish Arch Memorial to the city of Galway. Meanwhile, the Monument was vandalised several times, last at the time of writing this blog post.
Public space and post-colonial discourse
Questions are pertinent when it comes to the commemoration and memory of colonial past in public space. To this end, Robert Aldrich asks important questions: ‘
‘Who ‘owns’ an individual or incident or part of the colonial record: the colonisers (and which ones) or the colonised? How can colonialism best be commemorated: do the old traditions of erecting monuments and putting up statues and mounting displays still work? Indeed, should colonialism be commemorated? What is the boundary between commemoration and celebration? How can local pride (or outrage) be reconciled (or should it be?) with divergent historical interpretations and political goals?
What we are indeed witnessing is a historical development of a larger context: Rhodes in 2015 in South Africa, removal of Confederate Statues in 2015 in the USA, removal of Statues in Canada in 2018. In fact, the way how commemorative landscapes have been often changed, were fundamental when they came with regime changes throughout history. Be it the Second World War, be it the fall of the the Nazi regime or be it the fall of the Soviet Union or be it the end of apartheid in South Africa: they led to significant changes to the memorial landscape. To this end, we are witnessing a larger debate on renaming Columbus Day in the Americas, for many years now. Insofar as there is one party ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ and local populace is uttering its disagreement just due to the political likening, then it is wrong and it is obvious to realise: the Irish share more with oppression and exploitation than any other people from the Global North. Only one who had had suffered at hands of oppression can truly understand the suffering of others peoples’ oppression. Solidarity in history is key to decipher the commonalities in tragedy. In the end, colonialism is a story of plunder, pillage and erasure of heritage. As Makau Mutua writes:
The colonisation of independent, non European lands by Europeans was therefore justified, whether it was through military conquest, fraud, or intimidation. Since colonisation was part of the manifest destiny of Europeans, and “good” for non-Europeans in any case, any method deployed in its pursuit was morally and legally just. Brutal force, including the most barbaric actions imaginable, was applied by Europeans in the furtherance of colonialism.
It is often argued by populace that the erasure of history will leave no education for coming generations. It is also argued that this memorial serves its purpose as a commemoration to persons to evaluate for themselves about the positives and negatives of Christopher Columbus’ ‘discovery’. But here is the intervention: we have turned blind to the normalities of the public space, we became accustomed to the spaces we inhabit and we stop seeing the injustices of history. The memorial we see has normalised the past: for the worse. The fact that only now -in 2020- 28 years after its construction by the Spanish Arch, there is an honest and reflective engagement with the past in the midst of global upheaval should make us uncomfortable: at the time the memorial was constructed, the country was far away from peace on the island, conflict was the result of colonialism. The Irish should be the first to realise: injustices are easier to defend and more difficult to see. In the end, those who deem a part of public space to be defended will decide of its value to public commemoration or reflection – not those who are most affected. The Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin is a stoic reminder to commemorate the victims first, and then to reflect upon the guilt of the evildoer. When a leftist splinter group of the IRA had destroyed the Nelson’s Pillar in the heart of Dublin, it was the expression of victory against an imperial humiliation which withheld the attacks. The public space had accepted it, allowed it be part of the collective memory of the Empire. Eventually, people turned a blind eye to it, due to its sheer scale of the monument of humiliation. Tyler Stiem states:
Facts matter, and the protests are, at bottom, about facts – the historical truth of colonialism, slavery and patriarchy, and the contemporary truth of the people they still marginalise. Without facts and without protest, the best we can hope for is that these systems and their legacies will continue to exert their insidious effect. At worst, they will be fully rehabilitated and weaponised. We are seeing this already in the resurgence of rightwing populism all over the world.
The memorials perpetuate a political use of memory, at the very root an abuse of such tied to the official history of colonial Empire, which sanitises the role of colonialism through its catharsis as harbinger of civilisation and modernisation. A statue, to this end, is nothing more than of validating machinery of colonial empire.
Conclusion:
What the public and the public space needs to revisit is the repressive erasure through colonial dispossession. Removing colonial statues is not undoing the horrors of colonialism and it is certainly not undoing the colonial conquest as such. But a restorative erasure of removing statues that echo colonial figures and their memory does restore dignity of the colonised. The fact that Columbus is glorified as a colonial hero and his visit to Galway is solely part of a larger narrative to intertwine him with local and national myth, stipulate Western supremacy and glorify imperialism is solely contributing to further humiliation of Native Americans.
Colonial statues and memorials are not only physical barriers to challenge decolonisation and reconciliation: they further perpetuate white supremacy in public spaces. The solution could be solidarity in common history, offering public space to empathise with those whose suffering are similar to the sentiments in history of oppression. A removal of the memory of colonial hegemony and superiority must be followed by the space offering to victims of oppression. The role of public space must be an infrastructure of resistance to hegemony. The late Tamil academic and intellectual, A. Sivanandan, said once: ‘We are here, because you were there.’ In the end, the presence of colonial memorial is the negation of the colonised and their descendants. The reflection of public memory in favour of the oppressed rather than the oppressor is the true contribution to the Irish public space.
[1] Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) at 13-28.
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