Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past
Robert Bevan’s Monumental Lies (Verso 2022) attempts a necessary and provocative intervention into the current ‘culture wars’, in particular the debate around the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol in 2020. Bevan sets out to show that the cities we live in are the physical manifestation of history and thus ‘streets and squares are not the morally neutral inert assemblages of brick and stone they pretend to be.’ (p. 2) This lays a theoretical basis for dynamic and critical active engagements with our built surroundings. Bevan labels this as a historical materialist text and I will discuss it on those grounds, identifying both the valuable contributions it makes to Marxist understandings of the ‘culture war’ and where it falls short of this aspiration. Through these textual ambivalences, we can begin to consider tactics available to current Marxists.
In his promising introduction Bevan strips away the ‘spectacle’ of the monument. Monuments are not unifying sites of collective celebration; they are created by those in power to lay claim to the physical territory we collectively inhabit. Monuments are weapons in the ever-present Gramscian war of position, they are part of the ongoing process of ‘deciding the ideological agenda for change and the basis of future struggles’. (p. 7) Our monuments are a ‘partisan heritage rather than an accurate history and a heritage grounded in hate where every period of struggle for Black emancipation has been matched by a white pushback using monuments as part of the armoury.’ (p. 38) That monuments are inherently political and open to contestation is an important and decidedly materialist intervention to the culture wars. Bevan understands this ‘culture war’ to be the result of an overcorrection of ‘identity politics’ against ‘an economically reductivist Left’. (p. 18) Bevan does not reject the need to look beyond ‘class’ but argues that class itself was ‘reduced’ to just another ‘identity’ by the Left, and that this opened the space for a right wing ‘identity politics’ built around a racialised national imaginary: sparking the present cultural conflict over the aesthetics of the city.
Bevan has produced a well written introductory text, allowing non-Marxists to gain a materialist understanding of the forces behind, and stakes of, culture war flashpoints. References to Gramsci, Trotsky and Engels illuminate this materialist approach to the paradoxically easily overlooked decoration of our cities, without suggesting that statutes, monuments and the media discourses (both ‘social’ and ‘legacy’) take precedence over the more traditional focuses of Marxist politics. The erection of ‘equestrian soldiers in stone and bronze… to patrol the spaces around them’ in the segregating southern USA was both a threat and permanent reminder that the courthouse behind the statue was hostile to racialised populations. (p. 35) Bevan highlights the ongoing politicisation of architectural styles, showing the seemingly aesthetic push against more modern architecture in favour of ‘tradition[al styles], especially the Classical [is] a proxy for attacks on cosmopolitanism and pluralism.’ (p. 60) This push is simultaneously an ideological foreclosure of modernist dreams of a progressive future and a tool to construct ‘city centres socially cleansed of poor estates and replaced with squares and crescents for the wealthy’ that also extract money from tourists. (p. 85)(p. 91) Conservatives’ policing of city aesthetics promotes the creation of segregated communities, removing visible signs of cultural difference. These communities are then policed again for ‘failing to integrate’. In the aestheticised politics of the city the racialised other is simultaneously ‘integrating’ too little and ‘mixing’ too much and is punished for both. (p. 99)
‘Authenticity’ of the City
However, Bevan then turns towards a project of preservation through an important discussion of the use of replicas to obscure crimes against humanity – via the facsimile Arch of Septimius Severus, produced to replace the one destroyed in Palmyra, Syria by Da’esh. He then strays into a concern about preserving the ‘authenticity’ of the city. This manifests usefully as a critique of the erasure of heterogeneous groups through the reconstruction of historic ‘old towns’ which facilitate ‘imagining new communities that carefully patrol who belongs’. (p. 140) However, it also manifests less usefully in the claim that ‘[a]n authentic real world makes things verifiable’. (p. 161) Building on this, he introduces the conservative trope that removal of monuments can cause forgetfulness, ‘[w]ith visible reminders and symbols of Franco removed, it is possible that Spain will forget’. (p. 251) However, who constitutes this ‘Spain’ at risk of forgetting? Will the descendants of the estimated 114,000 victims the Franco regime ‘disappeared’ forget? Will leftists drawing on the tradition of the international brigades forget? Will future crops of fascists forget Franco? The question must be asked, who needs to remember what and why?
The notion of an ‘authentic’ environment also lacks stability or analytic clarity. What can authenticity mean when our cities are endlessly rebuilt? Is London ‘inauthentic’ because it lacks the scars of the Blitz? Or would they too be inauthentic because the bombed buildings had replaced earlier structures? At what historical moment do we draw the line that determines which structures count as authentic? To treat the currently built as somehow definitive of a city’s history is to accept that it is more authentic than the ruins it sits atop. It resigns us to accept the dominant culture’s history as authentic, and subaltern, proletarian and subversive histories as somehow less authentic. The move to authenticity necessitates at least a partial acceptance of the very partisan history Bevan set out to critique. The push for authenticity of the past will leave us unable to move to the future.
On one level Bevan’s argument mirrors that of Marxist philosopher Liam Kofi Bright: the historical materialist position is not to get caught up in the culture war, the ‘white psychodrama’, but to focus on material improvements in living standards, on transforming social relations.[1] ‘The meaningful amelioration of the offence caused by the statues may be better served in the long run by removing the societal causes of the offence’. (p. 266) Bevan doesn’t say we can never change the aesthetics of the city. In fact, he makes a strong case for recontextualising statues by adding ‘layers’ that do not ‘obliterate the original’. (p. 285) However, this limits the scope of his call to action to a call for reformism. Bevan pushes for a transformation of the monuments through struggle, but the horizon of possibility here is détournement; not an actual reshaping of the city, just a recontextualising in the present. A ‘perfect’ model of the history of the city becomes more important than what those struggling against racism want the city to look like. He claims to seek liberation but ends up advocating that we be entombed in a finished history, trapped in an endless museum we can never fully inhabit, debating the correct interpretation of the artefacts. His project moves from critiquing the shape of the city, to needing to protect it as a ‘true’ space for public discourse, in the tradition of Hannah Arendt or Jurgen Habermas. (p. 160) The agent of change becomes one who discusses and reasons. Bevan argues that ‘tolerating uncomfortable evidence’ is part of eliminating harmful social structures, and that the ‘evidence’ will become less uncomfortable as the social structures are changed. (p. 338) However, how is this change to be enacted? Based on Bevan’s view it seems the production of a new society manifests in the geography. Yet that is precisely what he forecloses.
It might be, rightly, pointed out that there is no one true Marxism, that Bevan deviating from my preferred interpretation is not necessarily abandoning Marxism, and that deviation from Marxism isn’t necessarily wrong. Firstly, whilst my critique is framed in terms of Bevan’s break with Marxism, whether Bevan’s position could be defended by reference to Marx and the Marxist canon is far less important than if his position opens up or forecloses useful avenues for struggle in the here and now. Secondly, Marxists of various stripes have always emphasised its importance as a philosophy for change. For example, Althusser’s understanding of Marxism as a new practice of philosophy that does not just ‘ruminate’ intellectual problems;[2] Marcuse’s insistence that the Marxist method reveals the new reason which is coming into being within the unreasonable status quo,[3] and so on.
‘Authenticity’, if it has any critical content for Marxists, is that of the emergent struggle. Marxism, whilst engaging extensively with history, is – or should be – fundamentally more concerned with that which is being brought into being by ‘the real movement that abolishes the present state’. Marxism must not be the ‘authentic’ recording of a settled, unified ‘History’, but the partisan forward movement of history. Bevan recognises the need for struggle, and the perniciousness of reactionary nostalgia, but falls short of the need to transcend the current city because of his focus on the belief that its physical shape determines our subjectivity and behaviour. He is, of course, right to be sceptical of positions arguing that ‘design … will actually cause social change rather than simply reflect it’. (p. 17) and the implied fixes of such positions: changing the aesthetics of the capitalist city will not solve capitalism. Pushing us to focus on social relations behind cultural things rather than the ‘things’ themselves is a very traditional Marxist position. However, the lack of nuance in this rejection leads Bevan into a very un-Marxist position: the city ceases to be anything other than a record of history to be maintained and properly curated. Just because toppling individual statues is insufficient for change, does not mean it is not part of the process.
Pedagogy of the City
The city is pedagogical. It can teach the history of class struggle, yet also continues to discipline us with hostile and defensive architecture. So, whilst the physical layout of the city is not definitive of our consciousness or liberation, it has a real impact on both, and its transformation must be part of any revolutionary project.
If the city disciplines us and normalises certain practices, then transformation of the city will also be pedagogical, teaching us that we can build a world we wish to live in. Yes, the point must be not to get captured into the discourse of city aesthetics, and engage in the ‘psychodrama’. However, just because a practice can be captured does not make it inherently useless. Instead of discarding a useful tactic, we should develop an understanding of how this capture works, so as to better resist it. Key to this understanding is that, contrary to Bevan’s account, the decoupling of ‘identity’ from class analysis was not the result of an over-exuberant Left but a program of counter-insurgency and a series of compromises. ‘Identity politics’ developed its hegemonic form through a project of ‘antiracism from above’ whereby the British state was able to ‘manage the contradictions of governing a racist society without meaningfully addressing them’.[4] This was achieved through a combination of promoting a ‘deepening of class stratification within these communities’[5] and government ‘recognition’ of ‘community leaders’ who could be used to mediate between the state and racialised communities following the uprisings of 1981, perhaps most famously in Brixton.[6] This process cannot be separated from the long history of racism whereby white labour movements supported the racial divisions that ‘antiracism from above’ built upon, through ‘whiteness riots’ against racialised communities[7] and buying into eugenic notions of the ‘white’ and ‘British’ racial identity’.[8] In light of these ‘fractures’ it is unsurprising that a racially divided labour movement was susceptible to the state’s counterinsurgent ‘antiracism from above’ as well as the ‘culture wars’. Thus, the political ‘whiteness’ that undergirds ‘right wing identity politics’ should not be seen as taking its inspiration from left wing ‘identity politics’ as we have seen Bevan suggest. Further, left wing ‘identity politics’ evidently did not create ‘fractures’ within the Left, rather these fractures that seem constitutive of left wing ‘identity politics’ emerged in response to the influence this political ‘whiteness’ held in the mainstream British Left. Therefore, what is needed is not a retreat from or rejection of ‘identity politics’ but an overcoming of the constitutive divisions of racial capitalism through solidarity and engagement with movements representing an ‘antiracism from below’.
By placing the emphasis on left wing ‘identity politics’ in his account of the driving forces behind the ‘culture wars’, Bevan risks obscuring the aforementioned conditions that gave rise to left wing ‘identity politics’. He is right to be concerned about the mobilisation of ‘culture’ by the right, but he wrongly assumes that this is countered through moderating the impact anti-racist activists have on the shape of the city. His reformist program correctly identifies that the racial divisions constitutive of capitalism in Britain present an enormous challenge to liberatory struggle, however it would do little in practice to address them. At best he can hope for a slow change in the efficacy of political ‘whiteness’, allowing for economic reform; but this would be won through a potentially patronising restraint of anti-racist movements. It would also assume that statues have an impact that is simultaneously important enough to include in his program, but not important enough for them to be removed.
The communal activity of removing the monuments of colonialism and capitalism could have an important psychological effect, teaching the oppressed and exploited that the power to reshape the city is in reach. To miss the role that reshaping our built environment plays in changing us is to undo Marx’s vital connection of ‘praxis’ or self-creation to ‘poesis’, or production.[9] Statues, like ‘art’, make us perceive something that does not exist in the brute empirics of reality. Colston did not, in empirical reality, loom over modern day Bristol. But the statue’s existence showed his continual influence. Does, then, its removal end this allusion to this truth beyond the empirical facts? No, because his removal itself becomes a cultural artefact. Bevan’s reformism obscures the radical potential of statue toppling. The circulation of images of Colston’s removal has a consciousness-raising effect: it both directs our attention to that which, through becoming part of the city, we had often missed, and tells us that his influence can end.
Removing the statue did not obscure history. It made history. Against this, Bevan could reiterate the pragmatic point he makes that this is merely laying the ground for counter reaction. (p. 328) If by pulling down a statue, anti-racists provoke the government into passing statue-protecting laws, that does not negate the importance of what they did. It is simply the movement of class struggle. We must organise against the backlash, not fear provoking it; although, in the current political climate, this is easier said than done. At a time when the Left largely (although evidently not universally) feels impotent and in need of a new direction, it seems short-sighted to insist on a break with what was a locally popular event in the midst of a massive anti-racist movement. Just as capitalism has radically transformed the pre-capitalist city, so too will what overthrows racial capitalism.
This pragmatism Bevan espouses should not be separated from his understanding of what ‘identity politics’ is. In both, the emphasis is on racialised groups not to push too hard and risk a backlash. This position lacks a grounding in solidarity. It minimises the responsibility of those whom antiracism from below pushes back against (although Bevan never denies where this responsibility lies) and justifies his reformist position with its emphasis on recontextualising over pushing back. This kind of pragmatism results in a project of interpreting history, not making it. It is not that we should not be cautious, but that we must not use this caution to shift blame from reactionaries onto those engaged in struggle.
Bevan is right that a reconciliation is necessary. However, it is not one primarily between existing monuments and the realities of racial capitalist history: ‘another layer of history that intelligently comments on its predecessor’, (p. 284) but the reconciliation of various strands of liberatory struggle. On Twitter the recent French protests against pension rises were praised and the lack of mobilisation in the UK lamented, yet this ‘erased’ the anti-racist protests during the summer of 2020. In the British context we must ask ourselves, why is ‘the left’ not following the trajectory that summer represented? The ‘fractures’ created by racism being ignored or placed as a side issue by much of the British Left[10] require understanding and healing. This reconciliation is far more important than properly contextualising statues, and it must occur through foregrounding the Black radical tradition and following the lead of the extant struggles of marginalised communities placing antiracism at ‘the tip of the spear for socialism’.[11] It is through solidarity and engagement, not simply recontextualising and détourning statues, that the contradictions of ‘identity politics’, antiracism and the Left can be overcome. We should robustly defend those who seek to reshape the world through ‘antiracism from below’ in words and in deeds, not worry from the side-lines about the potential backlash they will face.
Bevan fails to provide the Marxist intervention he intends. He seems to assume the past is over and that there is one history we see laid out in the city. He does not accept that the future, and thus the shape of the city, is yet to be determined. His turn to ‘authenticity’ contradicts his stated aim of liberation. He opens a conversation about the need to struggle to claim the city for the oppressed and exploited who live there but he fails to stay within that dialogue of radical transformation. He forgets that the point of Marxism is to change the world, not preserve it for endless re-interpretation.
References
[1] Liam Kofi Bright, ‘White Psychodrama’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 March 2023.
[2] Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 42.
[3] Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Great Britain: Sphere Books, 1970), 86.
[4] Azfar Shafi and Ilyas Nagdee, Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism (London: Pluto Press, 2022), 51.
[5] Shafi and Nagdee, 63.
[6] Shafi and Nagdee, 51.
[7] Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley, Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2022), 164.
[8] Richmond and Charnley, 111.
[9] Étienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, New and updated edition (London: Verso, 2017), 40–41.
[10] Richmond and Charnley, Fractured.
[11] Shafi and Nagdee, Race to the Bottom, 175.
Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past
Robert Bevan
Verso Books, 2022
9781839761874