A Questionnaire on Monuments

“A Questionnaire on Monuments” features 49 responses to questions formulated by Leah Dickerman, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty: “From Charlottesville to Cape Town, there have been struggles over monuments and other markers involving histories of racial conflict. How do these charged situations shed light on the ethics of images in civil society today? Speaking generally or with specific examples in mind, please consider any of the following questions: What histories do these public symbols represent, what histories do they obscure, and what models of memory do they imply? How do they do this work, and how might they do it differently? What social and political forces are in play in their erection or dismantling? Should artists, writers, and art historians seek a new intersection of theory and praxis in the social struggles around such monuments and markers? How might these debates relate to the question of who is authorized to work with particular images and archives?

Little Monsters

This essay uses the 2012 film Beasts of the Southern Wild to investigate the lingering investments in race and sovereignty that one encounters in fables of queer rewilding. Exploring the genealogy of the mythical aurochs as it is reanimated in both dramatic and eugenic contexts, the essay queries the burden of fabulation that the film places on its youthful protagonist. This burden restages the scene of engulfment through which racialized bodies and indigenous territories are dispossessed by and for white settlement.</jats:p