Summary

“Pulling down statues isn’t erasing history….erasing history is the fact that you live on land stolen from a people you can’t name.” Em and Jesse dive into  the theory and practice of decolonization–what does it mean, what are post-colonial studies, and how can we put this knowledge into practice, reforming our views of our modern American lives as well as the Middle Ages? This episode has a lot of the decolonization theory, and coming episodes will have a lot more of the practice part, but this episode does have some fun discussions of pulling down statues, weird characters in Thomas Pynchon novels, non-English versions of Shakespearean plays, and various forms of Orientalism in fine art, like the odalisque and the picturesque.

Notes, Annotations, and Corrections

1/ Harriet Tubman projected on the side of the Lee statue. Sometimes it blows my mind that she lived recently enough that we have a photograph of her. She died in 1913! [Agreed–super amazing and impressive! Also, the only Confederate statue left on Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA as of 7/10/20 is Lee. Richmond has taken down Jackson, Stuart, and Maury (Davis was already gone). Arthur Ashe will hopefully be the lone statue on the formerly problematic street very soon. The statue I discuss in Libby Hill Park (the Confederate Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which was on top of a really tall column on top of a hill overlooking the James River) has been taken down as well. History marches forward, and the former capital of the Confederacy attempts to help form a more perfect union.–Jesse]

2/ Malcolm Gladwell has a really good bit about plaques placed on offensive monuments to “contextualize” them in this episode of Revisionist History. (I don’t think I really need to tell you that RH is a really good podcast overall and I recommend it–Malcolm Gladwell has definitely sold 1000% more books than I have and has a huge following. Nevertheless, it’s a great podcast.–Em)

3/ So I looked this up for episode 10 but I don’t think I mentioned it in the notes–the family apparently originally built the statue basically in the middle of a corn field, and then later the city caught up with it (I believe they gave it to the city and then the city developed in that direction).

4/ As of my writing these notes (7/6/2020), the Lee monument is still up, but the judge who issued a stay of removal has recused himself from the case. Another lawsuit alleging that removing the statue would hurt home values in the area has already garnered FOUR judicial recusals… However, looking at the area on Zillow, none of the recently sold houses appear to use adjacency to the REL monument as a selling point, so I am unconvinced that the property devaluation argument will hold any water (one rental does appear to mention the house being situated at “the Lee circle on Monument Ave.,” but that seems more like trying to give a cross-street than anything else; they could certainly just say “the Dolly Parton circle” if the monument were replaced). [Yes, I believe that “back in the day” (i.e., until a few years ago), the Lee statue was used as a selling point. That no longer happens, but I’m sure some people who still live in the area bought their houses in those days (or their family did), and they might not realize that the statue is now degrading their house’s value rather than enhancing it.