Tarred by History
Materiality, Memory, and Protest
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8364614 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicole Maurantonio (0000-0002-3785-8022, University of Richmond, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2-3 |
| Pages | 51-69 |
| Publication date | 2018-09-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | de arte (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0004-3389 • E-ISSN: 2471-4100 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00043389.2018.1491109 |
| OpenAlex | W2904149121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 18 |
The act of defacing public monuments as a form of protest is by no means a new or a U.S.-based phenomenon. Roughly two weeks after white supremacists convened in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 to protest the removal of Confederate monuments within the city, killing one counter-protester and wounding several others, however, an act of vandalism was reported in nearby Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, assuming an unusual form: two buckets of pine tar were poured over the base of the statue of Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart on the city's historic Monument Avenue. Analysing pine tar as a material resource to protest white supremacy, this essay argues that the use of pine tar engages with multiple, interlocking, yet at times competing, histories of race and racism across space and time. Invoking a series of historic and folkloric associations, the use of pine tar opened a space for the re-mediation of memory of the Lost Cause. Pine tar facilitated a cultural critique that materially inverted dominant narratives of Confederate heroism and valour while foregrounding narratives of black self-determination. Replete with semiotic possibility, tar, this essay suggests, offers particular opportunities in acts resisting oppressive structures and commemorative forms
Aesthetics · Art · Materiality (auditing) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Public Spaces through Art · Urban and sociocultural dynamics
The Meanings of Graffiti and Municipal Administration
Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History
Lynching and Spectacle
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History
Youth, Graffiti, and the Aestheticization of Transgression
Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism
Racist’ graffiti
If This Statue Could Talk
Graffiti or Street Art? Negotiating the Moral Geographies of the Creative City
Tar and Feathers
Monuments to the Lost Cause
Political Terror and the Technologies of Memory
The Writing on the Walls
Separate times, shared spaces
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |