Confronted monuments: new roles for heritage in the face of social disagreements

Abstract

The attacks on monuments —street art, mutilations, being brought down— that have been seen around the world recently, cannot go unnoticed by heritage academics. It is a phenomenon that heralds the obsolescence of ideas and theories adopted so far on heritage and its conservation. Throughout this work, reflections are made about heritage as cultural heritage, explaining how commemorative monuments differ from historical monuments, a topic that comes under the limelight when talking about museification and petrification of heritage. To give context to this phenomenon, three attacks on monuments are addressed the march of November 8th, 2018 in Santiago de Chile, when people brought down statues in the US and England within the Black Lives Matter movement and the #NoMeCuidanMeViolan movement, in Mexico. The reflection considers the motivations behind these actions against heritage, the reactions of hegemonic groups and, more than anything, the resignifications and redefinitions that are taking place or could take place, as a result of all this, about cultural heritage.