Monumental Victories

Abstract This chapter rounds up the examination of the link between victory and time through the analysis of a last, widespread victory practice: monument building. It argues that, across levels of contestation and on a global scale, victory monuments reproduce the hegemonic understanding of victory as the end of war and a material outcome of armed conflict. The chapter analyses three different victory monuments: the Hands of Victory in Baghdad, the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, and the Victory Gate in Bolzano. It demonstrates that victory is ubiquitous in discourse because it offers social orientation to both individuals and collective subjects. Victories can be produced and popularized among publics no matter how fictional, mythical, or ‘staged’ they are when assessed against military developments on the ground. In fact, even when such narratives are primarily about identity politics and are only tangentially related to victory, they can still contribute to shaping victory’s temporal contours.