All Monuments Must Fall and Be Forgotten

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

We have recently witnessed a wave of debates about monuments (statues of military figures, explorers, conquerors, rulers, etc.). Moreover, many of those monuments have been intervened, "vandalized" moved, covered, and even topped down, fueling a series of controversies that invite us to reflect about the constantly shifting politics of memory and about the political effectiveness of pursuing symbolic justice in the public space. This is a Cultural Studies undergraduate research seminar devoted to a selection of important public monuments in Latin America; this is, statues, monoliths, and architectural visual signs that attempt to memorialize historical events and people as well as cultural and political values. We will examine their history as well as their paradoxical semiotic fate: no monument is able to install the memory it pretends to make eternal. Monuments are floating signifiers destine to be appropriated, re-signified, toppled down, and, eventually, forgotten.