Statues also die. From the south of the United States to France via the United Kingdom, the surging iconoclast triggered by the murder of George Floyd gives unexpected news as a fascinating anti-colonial documentary filmed in 1953 by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker. In the wake of an unprecedented globalization of anti-racism, the monuments honoring figures of the slave trade or its defenders, for whom "black lives" did not count, are suddenly targeted as unacceptable symbols and obstacles to living together.
Made at the dawn of decolonization, the short film by Resnais and Marker denounced the recovery of "Negro art" by the white colonizer. Premonitory, he explained how the way people look at African statues depends on the culture and history of those who contemplate them. Times have changed and the statues, whose protesters call for "death" today, represent not a dominated culture, but the very history of the rulers. Those who demand their disappearance are not colonized, but citizens of democratic countries of all origins, who feel insulted by these monuments, given their history and in the name of their demand for equality.
Whether it is General Robert Lee whose monument is to be dismantled in Richmond (Virginia), Edward Colston, slave trader whose statue was shot down, Sunday June 7 by protesters in Bristol (England), or the campaign, in France, to withdraw that of Colbert who sits before the National Assembly in Paris, the personalities targeted are so many figures of a glorious history become shameful. The challenges are common: to put an end to the suffering engendered by hurtful tributes, to allow the descendants of the victims to appropriate a complex story hitherto written by the victors, to facilitate the emergence of a shared story, acceptable to all .
"Healing process"
" The times have changed ", said Levar Stoney, black mayor and Democrat of Richmond, Virginia, justifying his decision to remove the statue of General Lee, hero of the Southern Slavery during the American Civil War, as necessary " healing process From the wounds of the past. Built in France and installed in 1890 in the former capital of the Confederates in full legalization of racial segregation, the huge equestrian statue is hated by blacks, especially since monuments of this type have become emblematic places for the racist American far right.
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