Anna Angelica Ainio (London): Leave Them as They are. The Disfigurement of Robert E. Lee Monument

This paper is a response to the ongoing contestation on the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond. Protesters belonging to the Black Lives Matter group renewed the already burning issue of Confederate Statues, calling for their removal. Arguments pro or against removal have transformed the debate into a dichotomy. My paper suggests a third way of thinking about this debate through the example of Pasquino, a Hellenistic marble unearthed in 16th century Rome that became a tool for the public to express their voices through attaching pamphlets onto it. Pasquino raises questions on conservation, subverting its traditional conception as a practice focused on restoring the object to its original state. Moreover, the defacement of Pasquino ties to the notion of detournement developed by the Situationist International group in Paris during the 1960s. Detournement holds that a work of art can be modified to become the opposite of what it aimed to convey. Thus, through a cross-temporal and cross-geographical journey, I will argue that Lee’s statue can represent the conflicts embedded in its history thanks to the signs of defacement on it. This thesis draws on the assertion that the monument can become the representation of multiple histories and, in some cases, challenge the powers that produced it.