The Weight of the Past: Ecological Perspectives on a Contested Confederate Monument

Through a close account of the contentious history surrounding the Confederate soldier’s statue on the University of Mississippi campus, this chapter examines how the significance of any monumental object is shaped by, and bears upon, the valences exerted by other sites within its surrounding environment. Rooted in field theory, the ecological approach developed in this chapter emphasizes spatial and temporal contexts to examine three distinct phases in the statue’s trajectory to date, characterized by (1) the parallelism inherent in an additive approach to the commemorative landscape, (2) the amplification of critiques of that landscape that followed from a campaign to contextualize broader histories surrounding campus spaces, and (3) the current push to dismantle symbols of White supremacy on campus. As in earlier periods, the outcome of this current phase will be forged within the nexus of dismantling campaigns and elite efforts to resist or circumvent such changes.