Throwing books at monuments Agonistic memory research with Montreal monuments

The central claim of this thesis is that agonistic co-design with contested commemorative public art taps into creativities and affects to allow people to reimagine the designs of public space. By problematizing and intervening on monuments in Montreal, Canada, this urbanistic research on contested heritage offers a glimpse into agonistic theories, spatial design strategies, and methods for memory studies. The study of contested monuments begins with a literature review and then shifts to a chapter outlining Canada’s commemorative terrain. The latter is done by qualifying sites in terms of a threefold categorization by Cento Bull et al. (2022). Canadian monuments prove to animate dominant nationalist-antagonistic, universalistic-cosmopolitan, and agonistic modes of (counter-)memory. A singular Montreal monument, the Monument George-Étienne Cartier, shows how one feature can exhibit all three modes, while also demonstrating signs of memory’s absence, whereby the monument’s appropriations by those around it form mundanity’s presence. Then, a twofold methodology for critical research on monuments is presented. First, there is an analysis of a monument’s effect through a pragmatic semiotics focusing on intentionality versus inadvertence in site usage at the Monument Macdonald, Monument Maisonneuve, and Monument Vauquelin. Thereafter, to explore memory’s affect, co-design proves a creative and artistic method for agonistic engagement with the Monument Vauquelin and its counterpart, Nelson’s Column. The intent is to reopen a closed-ended dialogical coupling of a contested monument and its counter-positional feature. The agonistic co-design follows an experimental four-part model of walk, create, display, and reflect to encourage open mnemonic discourse. Thereafter, an agonistic theory for intervening on contested monuments is framed. This counter-commemorative approach hinges on principles of open-ended contest, participation, and temporariness in form to reflect memory’s subjectivity, strife, and flux. The design-work as memory-work explores the creativity and temporality of remembrance.