Symbolic Capital and Material Inequalities

Abstract

This article explores the symbolism of three objects that memorialize Brixton as a multiclass and multiracial space while eliding the inequalities that racialized and classed identities are inscribed with. Although each of the three objects were formed to commemorate very different moments in the history of British capitalism and in the struggle against apartheid, they are linked both by their location in this diverse neighborhood and by the ways that they smooth over the contradictions of the persistence, evident in public space, of sharp political and economic inequalities. Despite the very different intentions that lay behind the erection of these commemorative objects, they are inscribed with a shared claim that not only can a particular kind of British capitalism coexist with liberty and (racial) equality, but it is a precondition of both.