Bronze Censorship. Confederate monuments and the counter-narrative of Afro-American artists between iconoclasm and new figuration

Abstract

The history of the American Civil War represents, for the United States, a highly symbolic and identity-defining element, while at the same time, it has been highly exclusionary, denying the Black community any possibility of a counter-narrative and visual discourse. Over the past ten years, in response to tragic events such as the Charleston massacre and the killing of George Floyd, a process of historical reevaluation has been initiated, increasingly revealing the false mythology, the so-called 'Lost Cause' myth, which supported the construction of a pseudo-historical narrative aimed at justifying and legitimizing endemic racism, especially in the Southern states. In this process, the Confederate symbol, encompassing monuments, tombstones, holidays, street names, and school names, has played an essential role in shaping a particular collective imagination. In particular, Confederate statues have never represented a historical memory but have directed a supremacist political ideology that has shown its resurgence, never fully dormant, in recent years. Starting from a desire to assert Black presence within the American political, social, and public space, two apparently contrasting approaches have developed. On the one hand, there has been a desire for symbolic recovery and reappropriation through the work of artists like Kehinde Wiley and Hank Willis Thomas, who have reimagined the Confederate symbol by turning it upside down. On the other hand, particularly through Afro-pessimistic thought, there has been an articulation of the need to reject symbols and icons, even within Black culture, as the only means to avoid visual and social cooptation and the consequent risk of new identity loss. This text, aiming to complexify the concept of destruction/creation surrounding the recent iconoclastic wave that has led to the removal of several Confederate monuments following the killing of George Floyd, seeks to analyze the delicate creative balance between iconoclasm and counter-figurative narration, attempting to move beyond a series of dichotomous categories that are challenging to apply to the multifaceted American context.