[Vwoolf] Memorial to Virginia Woolf under scrutiny as council pores over potential racism links - The Telegraph

[Marielle O'Neill (1806529) PHD]

Dear Woolfians,

Please see the following article from The Telegraph (16 February 2022). As it is behind a paywall, I have cut and pasted.

Warm wishes,
Marielle

Memorial to Virginia Woolf under scrutiny as council pores over potential racism links

(Photo of the Dreadnaught Hoax) with caption: Virginia Woolf - then Virginia Stephen (far left) - in 'blackface' for a prank in 1910.

By Craig Simpson
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? The author has been drawn into a local authority's review of its statues, aimed at making monuments more "inclusive", it can be revealed.
The writer's memorial outside her former Bloomsbury home in north London has been dragged into audit by Camden borough council, after it drew up a framework to address commemorations linked to "racism, slavery...imperialism".

A bronze bust commemorating Woolf - accused by some of having racist views - has been investigated by council officers as part of the project to ensure statues in the borough are inclusive.

Research into Woolf will feed into what the council has termed "the development and design of a project to identify, review and interpret extant statues and memorials in Camden that commemorate individuals". Council information added that following initial research into local monuments "Members agreed to develop a project to identify, review and interpret all statues and memorials in Camden to ensure an accurate, thorough and inclusive approach to all commemorations."

Woolf, who wrote works including Mrs Dalloway and A Room of One's Own before her suicide in 1941, has been hailed as a pioneer of both modernism and feminism. But extracts from her work have been criticised by some for the use of racial epithets such as "n-----", and her diaries include remarks labelled as racist, including a description of a black person's skin as "black as a monkey's".

She also dressed in "blackface" in 1910 as part of an elaborate prank by the Bloomsbury Group members who posed as an Abyssinian delegation in an attempt to board the Royal Navy's flagship HMS Dreadnought.
The memorial to Woolf in Tavistock Square has been investigated by council staff, along with statues in the area depicting Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi - both said to have held racist views - and Matthew Flinders, the colonial explorer of Australia.
Camden council will audit al local statues using its research of these figures as a starting point, with a view to eventually attaching QR codes to monuments which tourists can scan with their phones to be told about the potentially fraught legacies of the people the statues represent.
A spokesman said: "We want to help our communities and visitors develop a greater understanding of statues and memorials in Camden."






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20220216/751443e3/attachment-0001.html>