Abstract The act of defacing public monuments as a form of protest is by no means a new or a U.S.-based phenomenon. Roughly two weeks after white supremacists convened in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 to protest the removal of Confederate monuments within the city, killing one counter-protester and wounding several others, however, an act of vandalism was reported in nearby Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, assuming an unusual form: two buckets of pine tar were poured over the base of the statue of Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart on the city's historic Monument Avenue. Analysing pine tar as a material resource to protest white supremacy, this essay argues that the use of pine tar engages with multiple, interlocking, yet at times competing, histories of race and racism across space and time. Invoking a series of historic and folkloric associations, the use of pine tar opened a space for the re-mediation of memory of the Lost Cause. Pine tar facilitated a cultural critique that materially inverted dominant narratives of Confederate heroism and valour while foregrounding narratives of black self-determination. Replete with semiotic possibility, tar, this essay suggests, offers particular opportunities in acts resisting oppressive structures and commemorative forms.

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历史的烙印：物质性、记忆和抗议

摘要 作为抗议形式的破坏公共纪念碑的行为绝不是一种新现象或美国的现象。大约两周后，白人至上主义者于 2017 年 8 月在弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔召开会议，抗议拆除该市内的邦联纪念碑，导致一名反抗议者死亡，多人受伤，然而，据报道在前首都里士满附近发生了破坏行为邦联的雕像，呈现出一种不寻常的形式：两桶松焦油倒在城市历史悠久的纪念碑大道上的邦联将军 JEB Stuart 雕像的底座上。本文将松焦油作为抗议白人至上的物质资​​源进行分析，认为松焦油的使用涉及多个、环环相扣但有时相互竞争的种族和种族主义历史，跨越时空。调用一系列历史和民俗联想，松焦油的使用为修复失落原因的记忆开辟了空间。松焦油促进了一种文化批判，这种批判在物质上颠倒了邦联英雄主义和勇敢的主流叙事，同时突出了黑人自决的叙事。充满符号学的可能性，本文认为，焦油在抵制压迫性结构和纪念形式的行为中提供了特殊的机会。