Monuments to the past in a leveling wind.

• Date: 01 May 1999
• Author: Means, Benjamin
• Published date: 01 May 1999
• Author: Means, Benjamin

WRITTEN IN STONE: PUBLIC MONUMENTS IN CHANGING SOCIETIES. By Sanford Levinson. Durham: Duke University Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 144. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $13.95.

Early in the twentieth century, the Emperor Franz Joseph sponsored a monument to Hungary's history -- a Millennium Monument containing statues of the country's heroes, as well as statues of the proud sponsor and his family (p. 5). When the communists took over in 1919, the statues of Franz Joseph and the rest of the Hapsburgs were dragged out of the Millennium Monument and replaced with more politically correct statuary (p. 8). Counter-revolutionaries, though, retook the country and reinstated the Hapsburg Statues in the Millennium Monument -- until a later regime once again reshuffled the millennial display (pp. 9-10). Professor Sanford Levinson(1) recounts the Eastern European "high comedy" of the Millennium Monument to illustrate how those in power use public space to inculcate desired political norms (p. 10).

In Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies, Professor Levinson's central concern is the effect multiculturalism has on the use of public space (p. 23). Levinson draws many of his examples from the American South, and he considers what is at stake in deciding which statues belong in public parks and what flags should fly over state capitols. The American situation, unlike the Hungarian one, is characterized more by its sheer number of perspectives than by radical shifts from one view to another (p. 24), and so the meaning of public monuments is often hotly debated. Says Levinson:

My particular concern is the following: Do we, as a society, have a duty to the past to continue to give pride of sacred place to monuments to our -- and what one means by "our" is perhaps the central question of this book -- own "Lost Cause" of the Confederate States of America in spite of altogether persuasive arguments not only that this cause was racist at its core, but also that some of the specific monuments, such as New Orleans's Liberty Monument, leave nothing to the imagination in terms of their racism? [p. 32] Levinson considers various solutions to the problem posed by public monuments that offend at least some in society, but he resists adopting any proposal wholeheartedly. Although Levinson does not explicitly offer an answer, his book(2) seems to suggest an approach: engaging in careful factual inquiry and, where possible, favoring counterspeech over censorship. Levinson would have us slow down and think carefully about what is at stake in each dispute over cultural meaning, weigh all of the available alternatives, and proceed with caution.

This notice sets forth and analyzes the main lines of Levinson's arguments: that the meaning of public symbols often is indeterminable in a multicultural society, and that generalized solutions are impossible in such a climate of ambiguity. In so doing, I reduce the arguments to a linear progression, though the book itself proceeds in somewhat nonlinear fashion. Levinson allows examples to pile upon each other in a careful accretion of meaning -- a technique that I cannot hope to replicate here. The reader's remedy, of course, is to turn to Levinson's book.

THE CONTESTED MEANING OF PUBLIC SYMBOLS

Public symbols are state-sponsored speech and include, inter alia, statues on public land (even if paid for with private money) (pp. 89-90), state flags (pp. 32, 52-53), and the names of public spaces (pp. 17-24). In assessing the symbolic value of a cultural object, Levinson attaches great importance to the space in which that object is situated.(3) The debate over public symbols takes on particular importance in "sacred space" -- "public cemeteries, state and national capitol grounds, and other ground that is invested with special meaning within the structure of the civil religion that helps to constitute a given social order." As state speech, public symbols have a norm-shaping function. Even art in the public sphere is employed "to symbolize the public order and to inculcate in its viewers appropriate attitudes toward that order" (p. 39).

The meaning of public symbols is open to debate, however, especially in today's climate of "identity politics."(4) Levinson illustrates the ambiguity of monuments' messages by recounting several recent controversies. When Congress proposed placing a statue of three suffragists in the Capitol Rotunda, some African-American feminists opposed the move because no African-American suffragists were included. They felt excluded by the statue (pp. 28-29). Bitter debates also arose recently regarding a proposed statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Should he have a cigar? Should he be portrayed in his wheelchair? (pp. 29-30). Anti-tobacco groups wanted to remove the cigar, and advocates for the disabled insisted that F.D.R. be portrayed in his wheelchair. In 1997, George Washington's name was removed from a public school in New Orleans; father of the country or not, he had owned slaves. The school is now named after the African-American surgeon, Dr. Charles Richard Drew (p. 24). Curiosity piqued, one wishes that Levinson had provided more information about these controversies and how they were resolved.(5)

Professor Levinson devotes most of his attention to the fate of monuments to the Confederacy, over which battle lines are even more starkly drawn. In defense of southern tradition, Levinson quotes the historian Eugene Genovese: "`The northern victory in 1865 silenced a discretely southern interpretation of American history and national identity, and it promoted a contemptuous dismissal of all things southern as nasty, racist, immoral, and intellectually inferior'" (p. 34). Genovese believes that the contemporary campaign against Confederate monuments is nothing less than "`a cultural and political atrocity ...'" (p. 35). On the other hand, Levinson cites James Forman, who argued in the Yale Law Journal that the Confederate flag is irredeemably racist: "When a state government chooses to fly the flag above its capitol's dome, it `sends a message . . . glorif[ying] and memorializ[ing] slavery, Jim Crow, and subsequent resistance to change'" (p. 93).

Levinson seems resigned to the conclusion that debate over the cultural meaning of public symbols cannot be resolved in any satisfactory way. A Confederate statue inevitably will mean different things to different people. The implicit premise is postmodern -- that cultural artifacts have no independent meaning beyond that assigned to them by various groups.(6) Levinson never suggests a method, beyond paying close attention to "context," by which one might find one interpretation better...