Unlikely monuments, decisive monuments: mortuary homage and memorial justice on urban altars

The article proposes conceptual dialogues relating politics of death and mortuary homage, resorting to the notions of urban altars and implicit religion to reflect upon monuments and their strategic uses in struggles for memorial justice. From a diverse set of cases, the analysis turns to (re)actions - of protection, destruction, restoration - to the physical presence of such homages in public space. The problematisation of these objects’ monumentality corresponds to a constitutive dynamism in the process of memory making by historically subalternised segments and to shifting regimens of social and historical value. We postulate that attention to these categories may result in new forms of understanding the social action of subalternised groups and their memory work in public space.

Keywords:
Necropolitics; Monument; Urban altars; Mortuary memory; Memorial Justice.