Why is...Rahul Rao interested in the Psychic Lives of Statues?

What do recent controversies over statues reveal about global politics and the legacy of empire? In this episode, Rahul Rao (University of St. Andrews) joins us to discuss his new book “The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire” (Pluto Press, 2025). In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Rahul Rao talks us through his work in which he explores how debates over statues – from Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond – uncover deeper struggles over race, caste, and decolonisation, and how these disputes have reshaped anticolonial political thought. Journeying through sites of contestation across South Africa, England, the US, Ghana, India, Australia, and Scotland, he examines how societies grapple with justice, cultural memory, and belonging through the icons they choose to honour or remove. Rahul Rao´s research spans international relations, postcolonial and queer theory, and South Asian politics. His award-winning work focuses on the global politics of identity -especially gender, sexuality, race, and caste.

Rao, R. (2025): The psychic lives of statues: Reckoning with the rubble of empire. London, Pluto Press.

Rao, R. (2020): Neoliberal antiracism and the British university. Radical Philosophy, (2), 45–58.

Jain, K. (2021). Gods in the time of democracy. Duke University Press.