Counter-Monuments and Nation-Building in Australia

Counter-monuments aim to challenge and invert the nation-building agenda of traditional state memorials. Instead of presenting a simple story of triumph or martyrdom, they confront the nation-state with its own crimes and exclusions. In contrast to traditional pedagogical monuments, they use abstract rather than literal forms to accommodate ambivalence, multiplicity, and change. Scholars such as James E. Young have celebrated this new generation of monuments as capable of acknowledging the absences and uncertainties of historical events, and as able to build more inclusive, post-national political identities. They appear to allow the stories of victims and perpetrators to share a single representational space without either dominating, and are able to genuinely contribute to peaceful post-conflict coexistence. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.