{"id":14839,"date":"2020-05-28T20:10:56","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T00:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/?p=14839"},"modified":"2020-05-31T20:16:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T00:16:27","slug":"statues-de-victor-schoelcher-detruites-en-martinique-le-totalitarisme-des-vandales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/statues-de-victor-schoelcher-detruites-en-martinique-le-totalitarisme-des-vandales\/","title":{"rendered":"Statues of Victor Schoelcher Destroyed in Martinique: \u00abThe Totalitarianism of Vandals\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"
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YFIGAROVOX\/OP-ED \u2013 According to the director of <\/span>The <\/i>Art Forum <\/i>Didier Rykner says that the destruction of two statues of Victor Schoelcher in Fort-de-France by protesters stems from an ideological desire to rewrite the history of the struggle against slavery.<\/span><\/h1>\n
By Didier Rykner<\/div>\n
Published 10 hours ago, updated 10 hours ago<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\"\u00c9pitaphe<\/div>
Epitaph of the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher at P\u00e8re-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. JOEL SAGET\/AFP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Didier Rykner is a French journalist and art historian. Committed to the preservation of cultural heritage, he regularly publishes his investigations and analyses on <\/em>The Art Tribune<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The statue of Victor Schoelcher, which could still be seen just a few days ago in front of the former Courthouse in Fort-de-France, was the work of Anatole Marquet de Vasselot. It was as much a work of art as it was a tribute to a great figure in our history. Admittedly, this artist does not enjoy the same reputation as some of his contemporaries, such as Auguste Rodin, but he was a highly respected sculptor whose works are housed, notably, in the Fine Arts Museums of Lyon and Angers, the Petit Palais in Paris, and the Maison de Balzac\u2014the writer he often depicted.<\/p>\n

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This introduction seems necessary to explain that the destruction on May 22 of the two sculptures depicting Schoelcher<\/a> (We do not know the creator of the second one\u2014which is of significantly lower quality\u2014that was located in the city named after the abolitionist), thrown to the ground and smashed into so many pieces that they cannot be restored, are in fact acts of vandalism hardly different from those we have seen even recently in Syria and Iraq, which have affected not only masterpieces but also more common and less significant objects. For the vandals, only the symbol matters. Works of art or historical heritage have no value whatsoever.<\/p>\n

The new censors are convinced that they hold the truth and are the guardians of virtue.<\/mark><\/p>\n

In recent years, we have seen numerous attempts to destroy\u2014or, at best, to remove from the public sphere\u2014depictions of controversial figures. The new censors are convinced that they hold the truth and are the guardians of virtue. They cannot tolerate the complexity inherent in all human life and conceive of existence only as a constant struggle between absolute good (themselves) and absolute evil (everything that is not themselves). Even more seriously, they seek to judge history by today\u2019s standards, refusing to understand that history cannot be altered and that the essential task is to understand it in order to prevent the return of the worst it has produced.<\/p>\n

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What happened in Fort-de-France and Schoelcher, however, goes even further. While some are outraged to see statues of Colbert on the grounds that he was responsible for legalizing slavery, others are now targeting the very person who, on the contrary, abolished it. Are these new vandals, then, racists with fascist tendencies? Not at all: they are, more or less, the same people. In a well-known phenomenon where extremes always end up converging, these are far-left activists who believe that Victor Schoelcher acted solely out of self-interest and was therefore not anti-racist enough. Celebrating him (as if sculptures over a century old still constituted a celebration) would therefore be intolerable, which would justify their destruction.<\/p>\n

Even Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire, who paid a stirring tribute to Victor Schoelcher, would no longer find favor in their eyes.<\/mark><\/p>\n

At this level of reflection (a term I admit is poorly chosen), it is clear that no work of art, no sculpture, and no painting depicting a historical figure can henceforth be tolerated. For what men or women have been virtuous their entire lives, in every single one of their actions? Especially if virtue consists solely of thinking the way our new censors would have us think. By that standard, then, not even Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire would find favor in their eyes\u2014he who paid a stirring tribute to Victor Schoelcher, declaring in particular: \u00abThere is an antidote to the tendency toward tyranny: the spirit of Victor Schoelcher. There is an antidote to prejudice and injustice: the spirit of Victor Schoelcher.\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n

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See also: 1833: Victor Schoelcher\u2019s *On the Enslavement of Black People* Delights *Le Figaro*<\/b><\/a><\/div>\n

It\u2019s not hard to guess what comes next. If our predecessors are to be condemned because they lacked all the virtues demanded by our new Savonarolas, then we\u2014who do not think like them\u2014are even more so. Behind this vandalism lies, in reality, a totalitarian desire to control the thoughts and actions of anyone who dares to oppose their vision of life. These self-proclaimed anti-fascists and anti-racists are the worst fascists and racists we\u2019ve seen in a long time. They must be fought tooth and nail.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YFIGAROVOX\/TRIBUNE – Pour le directeur de La Tribune de l\u2019art Didier Rykner, la destruction de deux statues de Victor Schoelcher \u00e0 Fort-de-France par des manifestants rel\u00e8ve d\u2019une volont\u00e9 id\u00e9ologique de r\u00e9\u00e9crire l\u2019histoire de la lutte contre l\u2019esclavage. Par Didier Rykner Publi\u00e9 il y a 10 heures, mis \u00e0 jour il y a 10 heures \u00c9pitaphe<\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":14840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_robots":null,"rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-classe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}