Painful memorials

Statues such as the one of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, are actually important as physical memorials to the acts that were perpetrated (“Oxford college agrees to remove Cecil Rhodes plaque”, 18 December). If it takes an additional explanatory plaque to make this clear then so be it. I think that what is being objected to is the appearance of “straight”, unqualified commemoration, which the visual language of the statue originally performed. So long as it is made clear that the original uncritical commemorative sense no longer obtains, then I think that people ought to be satisfied. Evil occurs; its memory should not always be expunged.

Jonathan Meldrum
Via timeshighereducation.com

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