This was not a conversation about statues, but rather about what they represent. ‘I did not think the world needed yet another book about statues’, admitted author Rahul Rao, adding his interest lies in ‘the way statues are being used as a portal, a doorway into deeper conversations about race, and caste and decolonisation’.

Rahul was at the Tigre de Papel bookstore, in Lisbon, late last Friday afternoon, together with historian Sanjay Seth and IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST researcher Afonso Dias Ramos, to discuss his newly published The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire, in a presentation event organised by IN2PAST.

‘Ultimately, as we know, the contestation about statues is not about statues, as material embodied things in the world, but rather about what they represent, or what they serve as a flashpoint for,’ argued art historian Afonso. In this ‘very elegantly written’ book, as both Sanjay and Afonso put it, Rahul explores various controversies about statues around the world and the way protesters use them ‘as a rhetorical device, a means of having these conversations about structural racism that nobody really wants to have’.

For Sanjay Seth, this is much more than ‘an extremely topical book’ since ‘amidst the plethora of disorientating statue topplings, Rahul makes some important distinctions’. Rather than affirmations of regime change, many of the statue controversies analysed are protests against the failure of regime change.

In a discussion covering issues such as decolonisation, racism, iconoclasms, public space, statue erection and toppling, or even competitive statue building, Rahul also explained why ‘his’ statues have psychic lives. If you could not join us last Friday, listen to the event podcast by Tigre de Papel here or below.