ABSTRACT

Richards’s article is a reflection on comparative history inspired by the pulling down of the statue of the slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol in June 2020. It explores the evolution in Spain of state policies and civil society activism to do with public spaces and symbolic objects related to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. First, the performative element of the Bristol protest invites analogy with celebrations in public spaces of the arrival through the ballot box in 1931 of the reforming Second Republic, a democratic regime subsequently overthrown in the civil war. Second, the dialectic of remembering and forgetting British imperialism and the slave trade is compared to the struggle to make the past visible in post-war Spain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing the concealed past into open discourse in Spain through civil society activism since 2000 has been focused on three elements: making public the affective consequence of significant objects; gaining the support of politicians with access to the state; and broadening youthful activism to encompass supranational needs based on human rights and the environment. The argument is that conflict over collective memory in the twenty-first century is largely one between backward-looking narratives of the nation and forward-oriented ideas and practices that eclipse the national by linking the local and the global.

摘要

理查兹的文章是对比较历史的反思，其灵感来自于 2020 年 6 月在布里斯托尔拆除奴隶贩子爱德华·科尔斯顿的雕像。它探讨了西班牙国家政策和公民社会激进主义在公共空间和象征物方面的演变与西班牙内战和佛朗哥独裁有关。首先，布里斯托尔抗议活动的表演元素类似于 1931 年改革中的第二共和国通过投票箱抵达公共场所的庆祝活动，该共和国随后在内战中被推翻。其次，将英帝国主义和奴隶贸易的记忆和遗忘的辩证法比作战后西班牙在 20 和 21 世纪为使过去可见而进行的斗争。自 2000 年以来，西班牙通过民间社会激进主义将隐藏的过去带入公开讨论中，重点关注三个要素：公开重要对象的情感后果；获得政客的支持并进入国家；并扩大青年激进主义以涵盖基于人权和环境的超国家需求。争论的焦点是，21 世纪关于集体记忆的冲突主要是关于民族的后向叙事与通过将地方和全球联系起来而使民族黯然失色的前瞻性思想和实践之间的冲突。并扩大青年激进主义以涵盖基于人权和环境的超国家需求。争论的焦点是，21 世纪关于集体记忆的冲突主要是关于民族的后向叙事与通过将地方和全球联系起来而使民族黯然失色的前瞻性思想和实践之间的冲突。并扩大青年激进主义以涵盖基于人权和环境的超国家需求。争论的焦点是，21 世纪关于集体记忆的冲突主要是关于民族的后向叙事与通过将地方和全球联系起来而使民族黯然失色的前瞻性思想和实践之间的冲突。