Trial by Space: Lost Cause Monuments and Public Controversy through Bruno Latour and Henri Lefebvre
Abstract
This thesis is a discussion of the discourse monuments erected by Neo-Confederate organizations on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia through the political work of Bruno Latour and Henri Lefebvre. In response to framing the controversy surrounding monuments as conflicts over historical interpretation, this thesis asks how re-orienting the Confederate monument controversy through the intersection of Latour and Lefebvre’s theorization of politics and monumentality alter the approach to addressing Lost Cause spaces. My first chapter addresses the current framing of the controversy as one of imbalanced narratives, where a pedagogical solution is proposed to educate and contextualize Confederate statues. In my second chapter critiques the MAC’s framing of Lost Cause controversies as conflicts over different interpretations of history by examining monument sites as political arenas through Latour’s cosmopolitics. My final chapter analyzes how counter-monuments intervening onto Monument Avenue provoke controversies for marginalized groups to make themselves heard through a conversation between Latour and Lefebvre’s theorization of the trial.