TLRH | Broken Bones, Broken Stones: Iconoclasm in World History

Recorded March 09, 2020. A public lecture by Professor Philip Dwyer
(University of Newcastle) is organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub
as part of the Out of the Ashes Lecture Series. The destruction of
the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 brought the question of iconoclasm and
cultural heritage into stark relief for the first time in many
years. The Taliban were portrayed as “barbarians” and “vandals”,
but their act of destruction is part of a very long history of
violence committed by people either bent on overthrowing the
existing order – revolution – or erasing the past – a form of
cultural cleansing. Sometimes the destruction even involves the
physical remains of former kings, saints and political opponents.
While we have a good understanding of what iconoclasm is, we do not
necessarily understand the iconoclasts themselves. Why do people
feel compelled to destroy images that offend their religious or
political sensibilities? Can any meaningful comparisons be drawn
between, say, sixteenth-century Protestants and contemporary
Islamicists destroying what they consider to be ‘false idols’? What
connects the image-breakers across time? What do we lose by
‘purifying’ the past? Drawing on a wide variety of examples that
range from ancient Egypt through to contemporary debates about the
removal of modern political and military icons, Philip Dwyer will
present iconoclasm as both a religious and a political act that
cuts across time and historical boundaries. Iconoclasm as an act of
forgetting can tell us a great deal about how we prefer to remember
the past, and what kind of societies we want to build in the
future. As a form of violence, one that has existed throughout
recorded history, it is central to understanding humanity’s
cultural legacy. About the Speaker Philip Dwyer is Professor of
History and founding Director of the Centre for the History of
Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is the
author of an acclaimed three-part biography of Napoleon and general
editor of the four-volume Cambridge World History of Violence, due
to be published in 2020. About the Series This three-year lecture
series explores the theme of cultural loss and recovery across the
centuries, from the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in
antiquity to contemporary acts of cultural loss and destruction. A
panel of world-leading experts reflects on how societies deal with
cultural trauma through reconstruction and commemoration, and on
how the international community should respond to cultural loss.
The series is global in scope, pan-historical and
multi-disciplinary in approach, and features a panel of
international scholars and practitioners of the highest calibre.
Year 2 (2019–20) "Destroying" considers a form of cultural atrocity
now subject to international war crimes prosecution—the deliberate
targeting of cultural heritage as a means to control social memory
and to erase identities. The programme includes a special panel
event on the Four Courts Blaze of 1922 organized in association
with the Irish National Committee of the Blue Shield. The basis for
the Blue Shield is the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of
Cultural Property and its additional first and second protocols,
ratified by Ireland in 2018. The Out of the Ashes lecture series is
generously supported by Sean and Sarah Reynolds. See details of the
full series here
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/2018/out-of-the-ashes.php
Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/