Grant Parker (Stanford): The trouble with monuments
Friday October 6, 12-3pm (Phelps 401)
Classical antiquity holds an anomalous position in South African society. On the one hand its ongoing presence may seem institutionally overdetermined, e.g. monumental architecture, the law, universities. Some of these (notably the classicizing statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town) have been the flashpoints of social conflict, or else they have been naturalized into day-to-day oblivion. On the other hand, some less institutionalized elements of ancient Greece and Rome have made less predictable appearances in acts of resistance against oppressive governments. What kinds of rubric make sense of this diversity of classical reception? What kinds of historical consciousness are involved, and what is at stake therewith? By way of a case study, I shall consider South African commemorations of slavery, focusing on ancient Greece and Rome as sources or articulations of collective memory.
Article for pedagogy workshop: Paul Connerton, The Spirit of Mourning: history, memory and the body (2011): chapter 1 is ‘The birth of histories from the spirit of mourning’