Tek Down Nelson! The Struggle for Repair in Barbados

Abstract

In this article I explore how the decommissioning of the statue of Lord Horatio Nelson captures some of the ways justice is envisioned within Barbados. I ask: How does the decommissioning generate more attention to the reparations question? How is repair and sovereignty conceptualised through the performances that animated and structured the event? What do these performances suggest about the Barbadian geographic-historical foundation? I engage theorists of Black geographies and Black studies to work through the above questions. I do close readings of the performances featured in the ceremony, to illuminate how the decommissioning gestured to a range of histories and struggles that are punctuated by political transformation. My reading draws attention to how the statue's removal builds on regional demands for reparations and Barbadian struggles for sovereignty, which I argue are complementary aims.

Modernity's Antillean ecologies: Dispossession, disasters, justice, and repair across the Caribbean archipelago

“…Fugitivity gave way to diverse movements striving to create anticolonial human geographies and abolitionist ecologies. These range from labor rebellions to Rastafarianism and from the landless peasant uprisings to civil disobedience demanding the decommissioning of monuments to colonialism (Simone 2023).…”