Monumental events: Imaginaries, materialities, and temporalities in Latvia’s monument removal

Through the case of the Victory Monument in Latvia, in this article I explore how symbolic reorderings take place at specific historical moments. This article investigates how monuments can become epitomes of contemporary political and societal ills and explores how processes of their resignification engage both ‘material’ and ‘imaginary’ realms through which politics is animated. The article also reflects on how such monuments can be infused with various temporal values and assemblages – injustices of the past, uncertainties of the present, and fears of a possible future. By tracing how the material intertwines with the imaginary, and how layered temporalities are entangled, the article illustrates how monuments evolve into an oversaturated locus of contestation – misfits – that consequently leads to their obliteration. Such acts of unmaking and erasure represent intense vernacular political commentaries and performances of sovereign agency that actively aim to reconfigure public, social, and physical landscapes of everyday lives against the insurmountable material and imaginary powers of such elements.