by Kai » Sat Sep 01, 2007 10:55 am
I think we're forgetting that we've gotten monuments from other countries before, and to me it's, if not the same thing, at least a comparable thing. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, and while this time it's taking the form of a contract with a Chinese artist, I think that a Chinese artisan (which is a very different thing from a Chinese politician or a Chinese diplomat) is in a decent position to understand things like, oh.... being denied one's civil rights.
While it makes perfect sense to me that it'd contaminate the statue on some spiritual level to have it made from granite mined by workers without protection under the employ of a government that has no regard for them, the fact that China has civil rights atrocities of its own does not mean that individuals in China are incapable of respecting someone who would probably have cared about them, too.
That stated, I do think it's valid for a group of African Americans to assert that it'd be more appropriate to have a black artist from America make the sculpture. I do think it's valid to say they have more "right" to honor this man. However, if we say that it seems to me we'd be implying that no one but an American could possibly appreciate what King did.
Maybe this is true. But if it's true, that means no one outside a relevant geographical area has any context for the great works done there.
It means no one India or possibly England has any reason to respect Gandhi, either. After all, no one here went on the salt march. No one here has been a victim of the Indian caste system. I'm willing to bet no one here has ever been part of anything Gandhi did, and that most Americans who know Gandhi was a cool dude probably don't know jack about what he actually fought for.
What if a Brazilian artist were commissioned to make a statue of Nerfertiti or Ramses II for Egypt? Those aren't relevant cultural figures for them. They wouldn't understand.
What if a Canadian were commissioned to make a statue of Mother Teresa, a Macedonian woman who did her Great Big Famous Work in Calcutta?
If people objected to these things, enlightened and rational Americans like you and I would probably denounce their objections as the result of exclusionist nationalism. We're allowed the same leeway for exlusionist nationalism as anyone else, but I'd really like to see some admission that it's what we're doing, that we want to turn down a brilliant artist (and looking at the sculpture I can see that's what he is) because he belongs to a culture that "wouldn't understand."
We can say, "a Chinese artist wouldn't understand. He was too awesome for your Mongol mind to comprehend," but we also need to keep in mind that this could snap back on us, too, someday. We won't have any right to complain when someone tells us that an American shouldn't be the one commemorating X or Y Important Global Event.
EDIT: Lots of edits for a million tiny errors that'll drive me nuts if I don't fix them.