ABSTRACT
Beginning with Rhodes Must Fall at the University of Cape Town, and its successful removal of the monument to Cecil Rhodes in 2015, the chapter goes on to examine the refusal of Oriel College Oxford to remove their Rhodes monument, despite pressure from Rhodes Must Fall Oxford and Black Lives Matter. The chapter examines the history of the commissioning and building of the Rhodes Building at Oriel, of which the monument forms a part and was a condition of the lucrative Rhodes Scholarship programme. Using critical work by Walter Rodney, Achille Mbembe, and others, the chapter explores the complexities between the British education system and colonial power, including the differences between colonial monuments erected in colonised and coloniser countries. Whilst the former are more easily recognisable as being part of an aesthetics of domination, the latter is often viewed as an extension of liberal intellectualism. The chapter introduces Edward Said’s ‘grammars of exchange’ to characterise how the Rhodes Building reaffirms the myth that British culture exonerates itself from entanglements with power. The chapter concludes by using Sara Ahmed’s work on racism, diversity, and the institutional will to change and this alignment with liberal intellectualism as described by Uday Singh Mehta.
