Lecture | Book Talk
Book Talk: The Psychic Lives of Statues
- Date
- Monday 17 November 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.12
Description
From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic Lives of Statues by Rahul Rao offers an insightful exploration of these global controversies, demonstrating that beneath their surface lie deeper struggles over race, caste, and the politics of decolonisation.
Rao takes readers on a journey through South Africa, England, the US, Ghana, India, Australia, and Scotland, revealing how statue controversies have dramatically rearranged the canon of anticolonial political thought. By examining these debates through a personal and literary lens, Rao addresses the multifaceted issues of justice, cultural memory, and belonging.
The Psychic Lives of Statues examines both the toppling of colonial statues and the raising of postcolonial ones, demonstrating that the statue form as a medium of representation and a bid for immortality is by no means obsolete. Engaging with artists, scholars, and activists, Rao provides fresh perspectives on how societies grapple with and reinterpret the past and present through iconography.
Speaker bio:
Rahul Rao is a Reader in International Political Thought in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Prior to this, he worked at SOAS University of London from 2008–23, where he was promoted to Professor shortly before leaving and where he remains a Professorial Research Associate. Between 2005–08, he was Term Fellow in Politics at University College, University of Oxford. Rahul read for a DPhil in International Relations at Balliol College, University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and has a BA, LLB (Hons.) from the National Law School of India University. He is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective and used to blog at The Disorder of Things.