The Democratic Potential of Monuments in the 21st Century – Creating Sites for Participation, Social Justice and Critical Discourse

Monument protests dominate media and academic attention.

Thereby, an important development within monument making remains understudied: increasingly, artists and commissioners trust monuments to function as tools to strengthen democracy.

I have identified three strategies characteristic for this development: 1) Monuments are used to invite citizens’ participation by providing more inclusive themes and interactive designs; 2) Monuments are used to demand social justice; and 3) Monuments are used to establish sites of contestation and critical discourse.

These strategies make up the selection criteria for three case studies from Austria, the US and Germany. Their analysis frames the planned monograph’s three main chapters.

Performativity in combination with audience reception studies allows me to examine how far the intentions of the monument makers coincide with how people behave at and use these markers in public space.

The comparative discussion of the cases provides more general conclusions about these strategies’ strengths and weaknesses.

More broadly, the monograph gives insights on monuments’ potential to renegotiate and implement three core democratic values – participation, social justice and critical discourse.

This will make a significant contribution to the global discourse among academics, artists, commissioners and policy makers on monuments’ relevance and functions in 21st-century democracies.