[Magdalen] Ruckus at U. Virginia

[sally.davies at gmail.com]

I think that there are ways to remember and honour those who died on th
wrong side of history, without glorifying the cause for which they died or
more properly were sacrificed.

The loss is more painful though when there is no victory to show for it,
and this unresolved trauma tends to feed destructive discourses into the
future. Here in South Africa we have had two rounds of this - the Ango-Boer
or South African War at the turn of the 20th Century, and the anti-Colonial
or "border" wars of the 70's and 80's, which were very similar in many ways
to the South Asian wars of that era.

I have been reading with interest about the historical timing of many Civil
War monuments (when racist laws were being promulgated or defended), their
ongoing divisive and racist effects, and also that descendants of the
Confederate leaders now support their removal.

Also about how uncomfortable many white people still are regarding the
daily lived experience of slavery with this strong pull to revise
history...we have that, too.

We also had a recent episode of statue wrecking in South Africa and the
debate goes on and must go on. The good gets bashed with the bad
unfortunately! Such as our beautiful Horse Memorial in PE which is one of
the few statues of a horse that shows it being cared for and fed by its
soldier companion, rather than being used in an act of violence. It was
badly damaged but has now been restored. Ignorance is also a big problem!!

I also love the Vrouemonument in Bloemfontein which commemorates the loss
of life among Boer women and children who died in concentration camps.
However, there is no space there for remembering the many black civilians
who also suffered, so it engenders complex emotions.

There is no comparison however between these sensitive pieces and the many
other triumphalist horrors that disgrace some of our loveliest and most
historically interesting places.

Sally D


On Wed, 30 Aug 2017 at 10:37 PM James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> This poem comes to mind (wonder how many others are familiar with it):
>
> http://www.civilwarhome.com/blueandgray.html
>
> It begins:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *By the flow of the inland river,    Whence the fleets of iron have
> fled,Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,    Asleep are the ranks of
> the dead:        Under the sod and the dew,            Waiting the
> judgment-day;        Under the one, the Blue,            Under the other,
> the GrayAnd it ends:*
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *No more shall the war cry sever,    Or the winding rivers be red;They
> banish our anger forever    When they laurel the graves of our dead!
> Under the sod and the dew,            Waiting the judgment-day,        Love
> and tears for the Blue,            Tears and love for the Gray.*
>
>
>
>
>
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > There have been a spate of demonstrations about the removal
> > of Confederate War monuments in the USA, and this includes
> > that at the U. Virginia campus secondary to the removal of a
> > statue of Robert E. Lee, the supreme commander of the
> > Confederate Armies.  I gather that dozens, if not hundreds of  these
> > memorials are scattered across the USA South, and dating from
> > the immediate post Civil War period.  They feature either a
> > generic southern soldier, or one or more of the commanders of  the
> > Confederate Army.
> >
> > Whatever opinions may be,  I wonder, however, how these
> > memorials came to be in the first place.  This is especially  true
> > of the depiction of the commanders such as Lee and Jackson.
> > I can still remember vividly flying out of Atlanta Hatfield Airport
> > right over the Stone Mountain, GA with its three confederate
> > figures (Lee, Jackson, and Davis, the latter President of the
> > Confederate States.  It was a kind of surprize.
> >
> > It would seem to have been sensible to discourage these  memorials
> > from the outset and thus spare the country the pain of the move
> > to remove them.  Oddly, I think Spain may have chosen the
> > better route by memorializing the dead of both sides of the Spanish
> > Civil War in the same monuments:
> >
> > _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_los_Ca%C3%ADdos_
> > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_los_Caídos)
> >
> >
> >
> > DS.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>