| Popis: |
This chapter turns to sculptures, statuary, and memorials. In visualising individuals (usually in a heroic or idealised manner), statues encapsulate in a very solid form the ideology of an age. Statues can be interpreted as conscious constructions of the language of power, transforming the city into an imperial text. They also symbolise dominance and exclusion, in other words, the marginalisation of indigenous peoples and minorities. Emblematic of the state's authority, they inevitably became objects of attack when such power waned. Ironically, their significance was only fully recognised at the point at which they were unveiled or inaugurated and again at the end of empire when they invariably became symbolic of a dying and rejected ideology representing an unacceptable regime. |
