H.4.1 Deconstructing the Colonial Landscape of Queen’s Park, Toronto Through the Lens of the ΛCDM Model of Cosmology

• Ashar Mobeen, Western University

The colonial statues that inhabit the Queen's Park topography invalidate the very land they stand upon—territory on which Indigenous and First Nations heritage is enshrined, yet these statues and their inscriptions make no reference to it. Pre-colonial history is eclipsed, both literally and symbolically, by individuals who evoke imperial and/or colonial authority. British Imperialism functioned as a global enterprise; it comprised an intricate and extensive web that exists to this very day in the shape of the Commonwealth. Yet, a web is the sum of its individual parts—can pulling on one part of the web cause a ripple effect through the entire structure? Drawing on the concept of dark matter, we know that the cosmos is a vast, but intricately connected network; galaxies are located millions of light years from each other, but they are connected through filaments comprised of dark matter. Then, is it possible to think of Queen’s Park as a galaxy within the British Imperial Universe—essentially occupying its own cosmogenic agency—a micro-microcosm, within a microcosm, within a macrocosm? I set out to answer this question by navigating the symbiotic relationship between the temporal and socio-spatial dynamics of settler colonialism. Through an exploration of the doctrines of settler colonialism, I show that this leads to fictional realities and/or imagined communities. Then, by applying cosmological models to the theoretical frameworks of Foucault and Lefebvre relating to space, and spatiality, I contend that Queen’s Park can be transformed into a hybrid locus. Thinking in terms of works by Stuart Hall, Edward Soja, and Homi Bhabha, this space can serve as an intermediary forum for the emergence of a revisionary moment of sorts, a juncture where race, culture, gender, and/or sexuality are simultaneously negotiated! We can come together to displace the fictional and/or imagined histories that make up our city and establish new structures of power and politics.

keywords: monuments, settler colonialism, decolonization, structuralism, quantum mechanics

H.4.2 Poststructuralism and Postmodernism and its Articulations upon Toronto’s Colonial Landscapes and Monuments (with Krauss, Jameson, and Foster)

Calla Elia

The colonial monuments within Queen's Park, Toronto, precisely the Kind Edward VII Equestrian statue and Sir John A. MacDonald statue, are an example of monuments that encompasses traditional representation and periodization of a "massive homogeneity in time." (Jameson, 4) Despite their opposition to what postmodern thought and poststructuralist theory dictate, according to Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson and Hal Foster, the postmodern/poststructuralist analysis of the deconstructive approach society has taken toward these two statutes are necessary to distinguish the future necessities of such colonial monuments. Is it possible to rebuild these monuments, or will they always bear the mark of their former and controversial glory? Would it be an act of erasure or rehabilitation? Is it hopeless feat of post-enlightenment subjectivity? These monuments have transcended their fundamental modes of narration, now to be a constant in the multiple representations of expansive time. The criticism of these monuments often takes the form of public art installations like "Life of a Craphead's" King Edward VII Equestrian Statue Floating Down the Don River (2017) and vandalism like the one targeted at John A. MacDonald's statue in late August of 2020. These monuments' appropriation, distribution and projections break down the perception of power it projects within the physical and geographical space it inhabits. In this way, these spaces and viewing experiences of these monuments are perceived more as shows and attractions, only to be capitalized on, criticized, reproduced, or deconstructed.

keywords: decolonization, poststructuralism, postmodernism, statues, monuments

H.4.3 Rubble, Ruins and Other Everyday Monuments

• Evan Pavka, Wayne State University

Detroit is often romanticized as a city of ruins: abandoned residences, crumbling industrial infrastructure and vast, uninhabited swaths of land. As much as this myth of urban blight ignores the textures of everyday life that play out within and the rapid construction of contemporary buildings, the city is ultimately a place of rubble. Like many crumbling edifices, these disregarded fragments found everywhere from street corners to overgrown lots reflect a history of complex and intersecting social, political and economic forces. Patterns of disinvestment, structural racism, displacement by urban renewal initiatives and more are embedded in chips, cracks and broken public spaces.

This paper centres on the ongoing project of recording the rubble encountered on daily walks throughout Detroit, positioning these quotidian elements as everyday monuments and small acts of civic memory. The resulting images are complemented by annotations including geospatial location, materiality and origin point to produce an incomplete, ever-evolving archive that surfaces contested and often erased histories concealed beneath the infrastructural skins of concrete and asphalt. What role can rubble play in preserving collective memory in the city? How do these objects—largely produced by invisible predatory social and political systems—work to visualize, relay and record those exact forces? By reading the collection alongside Detroit’s history, the project ultimately aims to question not only the role of these innocuous objects as emergent forms of memory infrastructure but the critical position of fracturing and breaking in the work of monuments in our contemporary landscape.

keywords: civic memory, infrastructure, detroit, counter-monuments