Reclaiming Public Space: Statues as Resources for a Queer Political Philosophy

Abstract In 1886, a statue of Antinous, beloved of Roman Emperor Hadrian, was installed at University College London for reasons that remain unknown. Building on queer aesthetic theory, I argue that queer statues such as this can be used to transform the public spaces they adorn from sites of violence into venues for the experience of queer ecstasy. This argument builds on the iconoclastic logic of movements like Rhodes Must Fall, which insist that public statutes simultaneously do violence within our public spaces and reflect a violent politics that extends beyond them. Articulating the histories of the statues that adorn our public spaces offers the public political philosopher the opportunity to enliven these statues with an explicitly queer aesthetic capable of inspiring ecstasy among their audience. It also provides the opportunity to critique the politics responsible for eliding this queerness in the first place and making our public spaces so violent for minoritarian subjects. Exemplifying this work, I utilise Saidiya Hartman’s technique of critical fabulation to offer a narrative of Antinous distinct from the imperial rhetoric that traditionally surrounds his image, transforming his presence at University College London into something ecstatic and reclaiming the public space he adorns in the process.