Smashing statues

Sometimes, bored indifference can sting worse than outright hostility. I was telling a friend about my present book project, The Storm of Images, which concerns the iconoclasm struggle in the Byzantine Empire during the eighth and ninth centuries. In my view, it’s a pivotal moment in the definition of Eastern and Western Christian traditions, so I was somewhat deflated when my friend asked, in effect, Why on earth would you want to do that? It’s so long ago, and the whole story is, well, Byzantine, a word that through the centuries has acquired plenty of negative baggage.

Fortunately, I was able to articulate a response that went beyond the simply defensive. In fact, I would argue, the whole story of iconoclasm is of perennial significance, a fact that should be as obvious today as in any previous era. Not only is smashing images an absolutely standard and recurring part of what societies do, but it is a fundamental part of religious sensibility, and by no means only for Christians. Simply put, it’s the way that we try to make new worlds.

Image smashing arises from two distinct impulses. Some iconoclasm grows out of hatred of a particular individual or the beliefs and causes that they represent. Here the smashers are striking at the figures represented, seeking to purge their memories as evil and unwanted. Such were the attacks on Soviet and communist images following the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. More recently, in the United States, we see assaults on statues of Confederate heroes such as Nathan Bedford Forrest or Robert E. Lee. Through attacks on objects, activists are attacking the larger causes represented by those images. The United States has, since 2020, experienced a historically very sizable and socially transformative outbreak of iconoclasm, which has been echoed around the world.