Monument, Memory and Destruction: Voices from the Past and Cries in the Present

Abstract

Monuments, tombs, statues, artistic performances and digital images, driven by the issue of memory, through the movement of criticism and destruction, are the key concepts of this article, which was composed as a joint (two-author) essay. These concepts are inter-twined with Walter Benjamin’s thought and inferential examples, mostly connected to the politics of the past and its echoes in the present. The political issues quoted in the essay are related to colonial times as well as to the present, accentuating the racial mixture of the Brazilian people expressed through an allegorical type: the caboclo/cabocla.

Keywords

• monument
• tomb
• memory
• destruction
• cabocla