Podcast Conflictstudies

The podcast discusses a local conflict in Austin, a coastal city known for its royal galleries. The conflict revolves around a statue of King Leopold II, who was a Belgian king and had constructed monuments in Austin. In 2004, an action group sawed off a hand of one of the bronze slaves on the statue as a reference to the atrocities during the colonial period in Congo. The group demanded that the statue be replaced with an iconic picture of slave workers. The conflict is seen as a questioning of the statue's legitimacy and a broader criticism of colonial figures in public spaces. The conversation explores different approaches to understanding the conflict, such as structural and agency-based approaches. The concept of cultural violence is also discussed, along with the distinction between negative and positive peace. The conversation concludes with a discussion about the possible solutions, including education and contextualizing the statue with information. The importance of questioni Welcome to our weekly podcast. My name is Jelena and today we will discuss a new local conflict. Our conflict is located in a coastal city, namely Austin, known for its seaside esplanade including its royal galleries. One reason why the city is so rich is because Belgian kings like to spend their holidays there, including Leopold II, who had used part of his profits from Congo to construct several monuments in his beloved city by the sea. After World War II, the city council decided that there should be a statue of him as a tribute and the brother artist Cortens designed and constructed the statue. The statue depicts King Leopold II seated on a horse, flanked on the raft, left a group of Congolese praising Leopold for freeing them from slavery under the Arabs, and on the right a group of Austin fishermen. Now the interesting part. In 2004, an action group, calling itself the Stuten of Standenaere, that is translated as daredevil or rebel, sawed off a hand of one of the Bronson slaves. They did this as a reference to the atrocities that took place during colonial periods in Congo. In exchange for the sawed off hand, they demanded that the caption should be replaced with an iconic picture of slave workers with severed hands. The city council of Austin refused. My conversationalist of this week is Simon. He is a conflict and development researcher and specializes in local conflicts. Welcome. My first question would be why should we consider this as a conflict? Thanks for welcoming me, Jelena, and the main reason to call this a conflict could be that there is a group questioning the legitimacy of the statue and is acting like it. It's very symbolic that they cut off the hand of the statue, given the history in Congo where this frequently happens. Furthermore, the cutting off the hand and defiling it with red paint is a quite clear act of disagreement. Destroying statues, furthermore, doesn't only happen in Belgium. It happens all over Europe. At least having criticism on the imaging or the honoring of colonial figures in the public space could be considered a broader conflict in Europe. For example, there is also the statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston, which was ruined as well. I can understand that. Within the academic debate, a distinction is often made between a structural approach or an agency approach. Within agency-based approaches, the sources of conflict are located at the level of individual agency, as opposed to a more structural-based approach where the causes of conflict are placed at the structural level of society, how a society is organized, and this sort of perspective finds support within Marxism and structuralism. Which perspective would you say is relevant towards this case? I think both are very useful in any conflict, really. However, I think we could consider the most relevant approach to one of the structural approaches. More specifically, considering the researcher Galtung, he designed a concept called the concept of cultural violence. Cultural violence is actually the idea that certain art or literature is made to legitimate a certain discourse, a certain view or reality. Concretely, in this case, the existence of a statue is as perpetuating a colonial or false idea, and this could be considered as an act of violence. Another relevant approach might be the approach of considering positive or negative peace. Wow, I never heard of a distinction between negative and positive peace, and I guess some of our listeners are very intrigued to know the difference. Well, I'll explain shortly. Negative peace considers the absence of manifest violence, sustaining, however, destructive and hidden structural violence, while positive peace considers the absence of both manifest and structural violence. This is very useful because in a peaceful society, conflict still exists. Some seemingly peaceful acts could still be considered and named as a conflict. This poses a new question. Imagine the hand weren't cut off, would you still consider it as a conflict? That is a good, yet difficult question to answer. I interpret the chopped off hand as a symbolic action, and it can be seen as a clear form of aggression, but the statue of Leopold II can be located within a broader discourse of colonial violence, and in this sense, all art that disguises colonial history can be seen as a form of violence, not direct aggression per se, but it promotes an idea, an ideology of the colonization, like the idea that Leopold II liberated the Congolese slaves from the Arabic oppressors, and this is something, in my opinion, not a single caption can compensate. We could widen this discussion by integrating the busts of Leopold II. These statues have received a lot of critique and commotion. What are your thoughts on this? The action group's comment that the statue is just a history falsification does not apply here, because in fact, it is a fact that Leopold II was king of Belgium and a part of the royal family, and he always will be. The objection could be that it does still contain a symbolic value and can be taken as the honoring of someone who committed criminal acts, even though he was a king. It might be weird to honor his deeds. Would you still place a statue of Leopold II today? Really interesting. Well, broadly speaking, there are two voices that both come to the consensus that various statues describe a part of history that can be called problematic. One group advocates the removing of this glorification of a colonial idea from the streetscape, while the other group considers this as removing a piece of history. Furthermore, some voices claim that this conflict has to be settled within the education system and that the statue can be given context in the form of a plague or caption with information with the history and the meaning of the statue. How do you stand against this kind of proposals or so-called solutions? I think it's very important to point out the importance of education, and a sign with explanation might be useful, but you can't assume that everyone is going to read that sign. Maybe that's also not a message that's clear-cut enough or sufficient. One could also question the responsibility taken from the city council. Is this enough? Something does need to be done with the statues, though. There are quite enough signals from the public that a change is needed. And what if we let the statue remain damaged? Could this be maybe a valuable compromise? After all, Leopold II did play an important part in the history of Auschwitz. Yeah, that's true, he meant a lot. But the clarification as a liberator is simply false, and it's precisely this falsification of history that's important and that needs to be questioned. It's important that how we portray history is not just something that happens, it's a choice we make. Even more specifically, it's a normative, even political choice. Who should be given a voice in this? I don't know, maybe the population? Action groups? Maybe a referendum might be a good idea? Very important question, indeed. Thank you for being our conversationalist of this week. It was very interesting, and thank you for listening to our podcast. Next week, we'll have a panel talk with students taking part in the occupation of UGENT, protesting about the ties of the university with Israeli universities and its ecological responsibilities. Thank you!