Horror vacui: the conundrums of an empty pedestal 1

In the wake of global conflicts concerning colonial monuments, a pervasive phenomenon has emerged: the presence of empty pedestals. While some of these pedestals have deliberately been left unoccupied and, in certain instances, have themselves become sites for ephemeral political and artistic interventions, others have been seized as occasions to install new monuments and rewrite history. In the latter cases, they can become potent heuristic instruments, insofar as they offer a glimpse of the values of the present, the interpretation of the past and the expectations for the future. A recent case in point unfolded in Mexico City, where competing accounts of history, temporal experiences and forms of representation came to the fore. By examining the particulars of this debate, we seek to contend that this conflict may signal an impending transformation in the prevailing memorial culture that has persisted since the mid-twentieth century. The choice to commemorate struggle and resilience rather than victimhood is understood as an indicator of the gradual reconfiguration of the so-called ‘era of the witness’. We interpret this shift as a transition toward societies that, by aspiring to and recognizing social agency, are progressively opening again to the future.