Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographies of decolonial memory activism in southern Africa and Germany, my paper unearths entangled decolonial knowledgescapes about Europe and its elsewheres. How can learning from southern Africa enable genuinely cosmopolitan horizons of a transformative anthropological commons?

Paper long abstract:

Over the past two decades I have written extensively on contestations of memory and decolonial politics in Namibia and South Africa. More recently I have become increasingly interested to apply decolonial research questions and methodologies derived from southern African empirical and theoretical perspectives onto Europe.

My paper takes off from long-term research on the role of contested memory and memory activism in former colonized societies, particularly the 2015-16 Fallist movements in South Africa and intersectional decolonial activism in Namibia. I will then turn the ethnographic lens onto European societies and present intermediate findings of ongoing ethnographic research on decolonisation movements and the public space in Germany. While due to pandemic restrictions fieldwork was largely confined to Berlin, walking became central as a method, and in the (initial) processes of theorizing to navigate the traces of colonialism and decolonial memory practice. Walking led me into Berlin’s social world of colonialism and decolonisation to navigate traces of colonialism and decolonial memory practice, human movement, urban landscapes, and social movements.

Drawing on ethnographic research of decolonial memory activism in southern Africa and Germany, my paper aims to give insights into entangled decolonial knowledgescapes about Europe and its elsewheres. I present an argument how learning, empirically and theoretically, from southern Africa can enable genuinely cosmopolitan horizons of a transformative anthropological commons.

Paper short abstract:

Rethinking visual archives as a kind of commons, this paper unpacks how novel approaches to collecting and preserving photographs and film footage might facilitate new ways of understanding colonial histories while also facilitating other ways of imagining alternative decolonial futures.

Paper long abstract:

What images do “official” archives contain regarding Europe’s colonial past? How public are these collections and does such access matter? What historical and ethnographic re-readings do these images make possible? Rethinking visual archives as a kind of commons, this paper unpacks how novel approaches to collecting and preserving photographs and film footage might facilitate new ways of understanding colonial histories. The paper argues that while conservation and preservation are key, access to these images also facilitates new modes of engaging the past that may contribute to constituting alternative political and decolonial futures. Attending to the precarity that often surrounds academic labor, especially in the context of Southern Europe, the paper discusses ways of rethinking visual collections as a kind of common ground, a place of action, where researchers, artists, and activists can produce knowledge that allow us to rethink colonial encounters of the past, while reimagining forms of action and interaction that can actively decolonize disciplines and institutions. At the same time, the paper unpacks the ethical considerations surrounding such visual reactivations, thus also connecting current debates regarding the repatriation of museum objects with questions regarding the digital circulation of images from equally complex collections. Drawing on the author’s ethnographic and artistic practice, the paper does not provide clear solutions, but rather ponders how rethinking Europe’s visual commons might illuminate new forms of action, engagement, and knowledge production.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation examines the complicated path to decolonizing European practices of reproducing colonial cannons of knowledge. Expanding from my ethnographic encounters with self-identified indigenous individuals, I discuss how to raise greater awareness of our colonial anthropological practices.

Paper long abstract:

I want to start the conversation reflecting on some ideas from Tuck and Young (2012): ‘decolonization is incommensurable’ (p. 31), and ‘Decolonization is not and “and.” It is an elsewhere.’ (p.36). I find these ideas inspiring starting points to look for common avenues to tackle the ongoing reproduction of colonial practices within European anthropological cannons of knowledge. First, we need to contextualize and address what European Anthropology is and how we position ourselves within it/them, as there are many Europe-s with different traditions. Secondly, there is an ongoing trend to add decolonial everywhere as an adjective to redeem guilt without addressing the infrastructures of power in which the colonial knowledge is kept almost untouchable. This refusal is related to the significant academic enterprise that encourages the fast production of scholarly articles at a young intellectual age and allows more creative writing at the end of the academic career. I draw from my ethnographic encounters. I tried to understand how self-identified indigenous individuals navigate some mechanisms within the United Nations (UN) system, how they encounter colonial expectations of being indigenous and non-indigenous in these settings, and UN knowledges. In these locations, decolonization is part of the narrative of the UN General Assembly (in 1960, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, also known as the Declaration on Decolonization, was adopted). I reflect beyond my ethnographic encounters on how the idea of decolonization is not taken seriously and is becoming a buzzword in our discipline.

Paper short abstract:

In 1890, 13 skulls were brazenly stolen during the colonial era from the Irish island of Inishbofin by famed British ethnologist Alfred Cort Haddon. The crania remain at Trinity College Dublin. Cultural anthropologist Pegi Vail, a descendent of Inishbofin, explores the quest for their return.

Paper long abstract:

In the early 1890s, a photograph was taken of cultural anthropologist Pegi Vail’s ancestor Myles Joyce having his head measured on the remote Irish island of Inishbofin by medical doctor Charles Browne as a crowd of villagers looked on. In this era when anthropometry and phrenology were employed to assign racial classifications during colonisation, a study was published incorporating photos of some of the islanders, documenting their measurements in detail and theorizing what these measurements might indicate, including Vail’s great-great grandfather James Joyce. Around the same time, influential British ethnologist Alfred Cort Haddon, with whom Browne had worked to set up the Anthropometry Laboratory at Trinity College Dublin in 1891 with a grant from the Royal Irish Academy admitted in his journal that he stole 13 skulls from the island’s cemetery at the St. Colmen’s Monastery ruins, with the help of Andrew Francis Dixon, a student at Trinity. To this day, the crania remain at Trinity College Dublin. Vail follows their hopeful repatriation to the island after having joined the campaign for their return with Irish anthropologist Ciarán Walsh, whose scholarly and curatorial work on Haddon and Browne brought this material into the public sphere. Will Trinity College finally let them go home after over a century and a quarter in their possession? If so, what can this act tell us about contemporary Irish and British collaborations at decolonizing universities and museums? This talk will explore the role of this fraught history of anthropology from a personal and professional perspective.