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.