Concurrent Session 2-B

Location

Bryant Hall, Room 207

Start Date

14-3-2025 1:30 PM

End Date

14-3-2025 2:45 PM

Description

  • Moralism, Interpretative Dominance, and Universalism: Three Unjustified Removalist Assumptions
    Dan Demetriou, Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Morris
    I question three widespread assumptions in monument debates: "moralism," "universalism," and "interpretive dominance." Moralism assumes that memorials should be only to good people or good causes. “Universalism” holds that memorials should represent or be ""for"" the whole polity or its (real or supposed) corporate values. “Interpretive dominance” maintains that—when faced with monuments with reasonable qualifying and disqualifying interpretations—policy should respond to the disqualifying one(s). I begin by showing how these assumptions have shaped removal debates, and then point to diverse commemorations—including Confederate statues, Indigenous resistance monuments, and colonial monuments from around the globe—to demonstrate their implausibility. Moralism struggles to explain the many cases where evildoing culture-heroes are nonetheless honored, such as the recent memorializations of Genghis Khan and Shaka Zulu. Interpretive dominance fails to account for how monuments, as texts, typically have reasonable qualifying interpretations which, along with principles of charity and other hermeneutical practices familiar to legal scholars and philosophers, legitimize preservationism. Finally, the universalist assumption appears particularly problematic when considering how diverse societies successfully maintain monuments to ethnonationalist resistance fighters—often Indigenous—who opposed their current values or political formation. I offer in their stead three alternative positions that better reflect actual practice and our considered moral intuitions: “sentimentalism” (which treats monuments more like family portraits than endorsements of the honored party’s moral probity), “interpretive independence” (which says we should often respond to qualifying interpretations, even when there are also reasonable disqualifying ones), and “particularism” (which holds it unproblematic for monuments to be “for” specific demographics). While not arguing for either preservation or removal in any particular case, these reflections show that the (dominant) removalist position is more difficult to defend when these assumptions are laid bare and scrutinized.
  • Re-writing Spaces: Monuments, Memory, and Ethical Forgetting (VIRTUAL)
    John S. Sanni, Senior Lecturer, University of Pretoria, and Research Fellow, University of Tübingen
    There are two dominant strands on the ethical dispositions toward monuments as sites of memory. First, the destructivist approach that pushes for monuments to be removed or destroyed on grounds that they embody negative histories, especially oppressive and marginalising kinds; and second, the preservationist approach to monuments that argues that monuments be preserved on grounds that seek to prevent any form of forgetting regardless of the memories that monuments embody. Other forms of preservations have also been to relocate the monuments from public spaces to museums or art galleries, etc. The decision to subject a monument(s) to public scrutiny already challenges its legitimacy. In the process of re-writing a space(s), understood here as the outcome of preservation or destruction, the human, as the subject of memory, is often implicated. Therefore, I seek to respond to the question on whether ethical forgetting is a plausible ethical disposition in any attempt to re-write spaces of historical monuments.
  • Chair: Zimy Le, M.A. Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi

Relational Format

Conference proceeding

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Mar 14th, 1:30 PM Mar 14th, 2:45 PM

Concurrent Session 2-B

Bryant Hall, Room 207

  • Moralism, Interpretative Dominance, and Universalism: Three Unjustified Removalist Assumptions
    Dan Demetriou, Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Morris
    I question three widespread assumptions in monument debates: "moralism," "universalism," and "interpretive dominance." Moralism assumes that memorials should be only to good people or good causes. “Universalism” holds that memorials should represent or be ""for"" the whole polity or its (real or supposed) corporate values. “Interpretive dominance” maintains that—when faced with monuments with reasonable qualifying and disqualifying interpretations—policy should respond to the disqualifying one(s). I begin by showing how these assumptions have shaped removal debates, and then point to diverse commemorations—including Confederate statues, Indigenous resistance monuments, and colonial monuments from around the globe—to demonstrate their implausibility. Moralism struggles to explain the many cases where evildoing culture-heroes are nonetheless honored, such as the recent memorializations of Genghis Khan and Shaka Zulu. Interpretive dominance fails to account for how monuments, as texts, typically have reasonable qualifying interpretations which, along with principles of charity and other hermeneutical practices familiar to legal scholars and philosophers, legitimize preservationism. Finally, the universalist assumption appears particularly problematic when considering how diverse societies successfully maintain monuments to ethnonationalist resistance fighters—often Indigenous—who opposed their current values or political formation. I offer in their stead three alternative positions that better reflect actual practice and our considered moral intuitions: “sentimentalism” (which treats monuments more like family portraits than endorsements of the honored party’s moral probity), “interpretive independence” (which says we should often respond to qualifying interpretations, even when there are also reasonable disqualifying ones), and “particularism” (which holds it unproblematic for monuments to be “for” specific demographics). While not arguing for either preservation or removal in any particular case, these reflections show that the (dominant) removalist position is more difficult to defend when these assumptions are laid bare and scrutinized.
  • Re-writing Spaces: Monuments, Memory, and Ethical Forgetting (VIRTUAL)
    John S. Sanni, Senior Lecturer, University of Pretoria, and Research Fellow, University of Tübingen
    There are two dominant strands on the ethical dispositions toward monuments as sites of memory. First, the destructivist approach that pushes for monuments to be removed or destroyed on grounds that they embody negative histories, especially oppressive and marginalising kinds; and second, the preservationist approach to monuments that argues that monuments be preserved on grounds that seek to prevent any form of forgetting regardless of the memories that monuments embody. Other forms of preservations have also been to relocate the monuments from public spaces to museums or art galleries, etc. The decision to subject a monument(s) to public scrutiny already challenges its legitimacy. In the process of re-writing a space(s), understood here as the outcome of preservation or destruction, the human, as the subject of memory, is often implicated. Therefore, I seek to respond to the question on whether ethical forgetting is a plausible ethical disposition in any attempt to re-write spaces of historical monuments.
  • Chair: Zimy Le, M.A. Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi