‘Unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time’: Anti-Racist Activism and the Performativity of Statues

Building upon Getsy’s (2014) understanding of a statue both depicting a body in space and being a body in space, this article addresses the performativity of statues within an activist framework. Whilst Getsy (2014) proffers that the immediacy of the ‘corporeal relationality’ of a statue is counterpoised by it ‘confronting us with its immotility’, recent protest actions have pushed – sometimes quite literally – the statue to the forefront of protest actions. In manipulating, manoeuvring and marring the immotile, activists have woven the statue – a marble ‘residue of past decisions’ (Caterall, 2020) – into the performativity of protest. This paper explores the performativity of activists’ manipulation of statues from playful anarchism through to urgent political protest. From the 2011 repainting of the Monument to the Red Army in Sofia, Bulgaria, to the toppling of the statue of slaver Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, I examine the theatricality of recent protest actions that manipulate the immotility and muteness of statues by placing them in the position of the performer. Absence – and the threat of absence – is also a concern, regarding recent reactionary protests connected to the populist far right; a white protestor occupying the vacant Colston plinth in an effort to ‘defend war memorials’ (Gogarty, 2020); the protective circle of police surrounding a statue of Winston Churchill - itself hidden from view by ‘protective’ wooden boards. The ‘statue’ (or the absence of the statue) proffers a form of performative pedestal; a stage on which both protests and policing become theatricalised. If BLM is a kairos – a defining moment ‘to engage in constructive dialogue’ (Atuire, 2020) – protest actions that interact with such statues place these monuments in a position in which their authority and immotility is viscerally and physically challenged – revealing the precarity underneath their apparent solidity. This paper offers a performative reading towards this dialogue regarding the interaction between protestors and statues through activists’ repurposing these objects as central ‘characters’ in performative protest.