Book talk - The psychic lives of statues: reckoning with the rubble of empire

We are delighted to welcome Dr Rahul Rao for a discussion of his latest book, The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire. Dr Rao is Reader in International Political Thought at the University of St Andrews and Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, and is widely recognised for his influential contributions to postcolonial theory, queer politics, and global intellectual history.

In The Psychic Lives of Statues, Rao takes as his starting point a question that has animated public debate across the world in recent years: what do we do with the monuments left behind by empire? Drawing on case studies from South Africa, England, the United States, India, Ghana, Australia, and Scotland, he moves beyond the familiar framing of statue controversies as episodic culture wars or polarising flashpoints. Instead, he situates these struggles within much deeper and longer-running contestations over race, caste, empire, and belonging, asking not just whether a statue should stand or fall, but what is at stake politically and psychically in that decision.

The book traces how the removal, defence, or erection of monuments does not simply reflect existing debates but actively reshapes them, reordering the canon of anticolonial thought, reopening questions of historical responsibility, and forcing societies to confront what justice might actually require. Engaging with activists, artists, and theorists, Rao argues that statues are far more than inert stone or bronze: they are potent political objects through which communities negotiate memory, authority, and the desire for permanence. Ultimately, The Psychic Lives of Statues reframes monument politics as a struggle over how the debris of empire continues to structure our present and what it would mean to truly reckon with it.

This promises to be a rich and timely conversation, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Registration will close two hours before the event begins.