Texas, monuments, toward a politics of self-reckoning

Bibliographic Data

ID12905623
AuthorsKatherine Hite (Vassar College, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume14
Issue6
Pages1301-1313
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980211054330
OpenAlexW4200207522
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited7

In this article, I examine the efforts of a group of anti-Confederate monument activists in Williamson County, Texas. The article begins with the history of the monument itself, 100 years before the activists initiated their efforts. The intransigence to removing the Confederate monument is symbolic of white resistance to struggles for racial equality more broadly. Second, I discuss how the local legal impasse has contributed to distinct anti-monument activist strategies that deploy counternarratives and memories, from performances, to challenging narrative claims regarding who is more patriotic. Finally, I explore the politics of self-reckoning—the process by which white people find that they have to answer for racism deep within themselves as well as in relation to violent white supremacy and the legal and institutional fortress that protects whiteness generally. Battling both racists and racist institutions is hard and lengthy, and monument activism persistently exposes what is at stake

Art · Criminology · Fortress (chess · Literature · Narrative · Political activism · Political science · Politics · Racism · Relation (database · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · White (mutation · White supremacy · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Photography and Visual Culture · Public Spaces through Art

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