Editing Iconoclasm (section)

===''Damnatio memoriae''===
{{main|damnatio memoriae}}
Revolutions and changes of regime, whether through uprising of the local population, foreign invasion, or a combination of both, are often accompanied by the public destruction of statues and monuments identified with the previous regime. This may also be known as ''damnatio memoriae'', the ancient Roman practice of official obliteration of the memory of a specific individual. Stricter definitions of "iconoclasm" exclude both types of action, reserving the term for religious or more widely cultural destruction.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021|reason=Which definitions?}} In many cases, such as [[Revolutionary Russia]] or [[Ancient Egypt]], this distinction can be hard to make.

Among Roman emperors and other political figures subject to decrees of ''damnatio memoriae'' were [[Sejanus]], [[Publius Septimius Geta]], and [[Domitian]]. Several Emperors, such as [[Domitian]] and [[Commodus]] had during their reigns erected numerous statues of themselves, which were pulled down and destroyed when they were overthrown.

The perception of ''damnatio memoriae'' in the Classical world as an act of erasing memory has been challenged by scholars who have argued that it "did not negate historical traces, but created gestures which served to ''dishonor'' the record of the person and so, in an oblique way, to confirm memory,"<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hedrick|first=Charles W.|title=History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity|publisher=University of Texas Press|year=2000|pages=88–130}}</ref> and was in effect a spectacular display of "pantomime forgetfulness."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Stewart|first=Peter|title=Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2003|pages=279–283}}</ref> Examining cases of political monument destruction in modern Irish history, [[Guy Beiner]] has demonstrated that iconoclastic vandalism often entails subtle expressions of ambiguous remembrance and that, rather than effacing memory, such acts of de-commemorating effectively preserve memory in obscure forms.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Beiner|first=Guy|title=Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|year=2007|page=305}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Beiner|first=Guy|title=Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2018|pages=369–384}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Beiner |first1=Guy |title=When Monuments Fall: The Significance of Decommemorating |journal=Éire-Ireland |volume=56 |issue=1|year=2021|pages=33–61|doi=10.1353/eir.2021.0001 |s2cid=240526743 }}</ref>