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- Convenors:
-
Sabine Mannitz
(Peace Research Institute Frankfurt PRIF)
Katja Uusihakala (University of Helsinki)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Thursday 25 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
The panel focuses on endeavors for decolonizing societal relations, which were built on and continue to be shaped by colonial violence. It assesses reconciliation processes as attempts at undoing historical silences, exploring the ambivalence and selectivity of remorseful politics.
Long Abstract:
After decades of silencing the violence inherent to colonial histories and their lasting consequences – within settler colonial states or international relations – recent years have witnessed a proliferation of politics of remorse. Looted art, monuments and street names of colonial criminals, as well as euphemistic narratives of colonial history have become the subject of public debate. Truth commissions have been set up to uncover histories of dispossession, displacement, cultural oppression, enslavement, and mass killings that is colonization. Some leading politicians have apologized for past atrocities their countries account for, but other cases of colonial violence remain unsettled and sometimes subdued. Our panel aims to scrutinize what it means to confront and claim to undo the legacy of colonial domination. What would it entail in concrete social relations, in different political domains, and the legal system, to undo the past and repair relations based on justice and equality? Can decolonization be made to work as a process of unlearning the conventionally learned historical narratives and categories? Simultaneously, we ask what kind of selectivity and blindness the processes of reconciliation subsume. Whose voices become heard when silences are undone? How do apologies matter to those they target? How does remorseful politics acknowledge irreconciliation – the refusals of those wronged to “move on” in the face of continuing structural inequalities?
We welcome theoretical and ethnographic contributions to the above questions and further examinations of historical compensation, restitution, and recognition; decolonizing and anti-commemorative action; and analysis of refusals to apologize, or accept apology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 25 July, 2024, -Amisah Zenabu Bakuri (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
Through anthropological inquiry, this paper contributes to the broader discourse on decolonisation, apologies, and the different ways power relations affect dealing with the past.
Paper long abstract:
On commemorating the abolition of slavery and the celebration of Keti Koti on July 1 2023, King Willem-Alexander, the King of the Netherlands delivered a historic speech in which he offered apologies for the Netherlands' historical association with, and his ancestors' involvement in, slavery. Before that, members of the Dutch government had formally apologised for the nation's historical involvement in slavery.
This study delves into the meanings of the series of apology speeches for descendants of enslaved and colonised people in the Netherlands. I explore the complexities of apologising and its potential to disrupt established narratives about Dutch history.
The research aims to show the perspectives of Ghanaian-Dutch and Surinamese-Dutch regarding the series of formal Dutch apologies, probing what it means to them and whether it addresses enduring structural inequalities these communities face. Through anthropological inquiry, this paper contributes to the broader discourse on decolonisation, apologies, and the different ways power relations affect dealing with the past.
Victoria L. Klinkert (Universität St. Gallen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper interrogates recent calls for reparations from those whose descendants profiteered from trans-Atlantic chattel slavery. It questions how and whether it is possible to move from white ignorance toward a politics of responsibility -utilising the framework of an abolitionist anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
The BLM protests of 2020 resulted in what has been termed as the greatest “racial reckoning” since the US civil rights movement. It allowed for a renewed public engagement with imperial and colonial history. In the UK, whiteness was being examined more closely and with it the structures that underpin it. As a result, acknowledgments of complicity in constructing and upholding a racially unequal society became widespread. These were widely criticised by anti-racist activists and academics as merely tokenist performances that can fall into the trap of inaction and thus upholding rather than challenging a white supremacist system. For some of these declarers, however, this acknowledgment of complicity was baring a history of profiteering from transatlantic slavery and those industries that supported it. They all represent elite institutions and families. It is these actors, and their trajectory from an acknowledgement of complicity and white ignorance towards taking responsibility, that this paper is focusing on. And in doing so, it focuses on how to reckon with Empire within the framework of reparative justice.
What are their motivations? And how do these sudden declarations and commitments fit in with longstanding Afro-Caribbean reparatory movements and activism? In exploring these questions with an abolitionist lens, this paper seeks to contribute to a reparatory social science (Bhambra 2022) and move toward a politics of responsibility.
Pascale Schild (University of Basel)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines unofficial politics of redress within practices of solidarity with the Kashmiri freedom movement in parliamentary politics. It explores how politicians in Britain assert their political responsibilities towards Kashmiris by recognising the British colonial legacy.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines unofficial politics of redress within practices of solidarity with the Kashmiri freedom movement in British parliamentary politics. It explores how political parties and politicians in Britain assert their political responsibilities towards Kashmiris and other oppressed people by recognising the British colonial legacy and thus their own entanglement with ongoing forms of oppression in the world.
The legacy of British colonial rule in South Asia has shaped conflicts and violence in Kashmir, as well as the longstanding presence of Kashmiris in Britain. For many decades, British Kashmiris have mobilised in public protests, formed alliances with local and national politicians, and called upon the government to support their right to political self-determination. They constitute important voter bases in numerous constituencies that cannot be ignored. At the same time, British Kashmiris themselves have entered local and national politics as elected representatives. Because of the British government’s denial of responsibility in the Kashmir conflict, deemed a bilateral dispute between Pakistan and India, no official politics of redress exists. Nevertheless, the political situation in Kashmir is highly present in British politics and regularly debated in parliament.
In this paper, I focus on notions of responsibility as conditions for building solidarities across inequalities and the emergence of (un-)official politics of reparation. I discuss the possibilities and limits of solidarities in parliamentary politics to decolonise the institutions of the nation-state by recognising global entanglements and related political responsibilities to redress and support the struggles of oppressed people worldwide.
Triloki Pandey (UCSC)
Paper short abstract:
Based on my longitudinal study of Zuni and bringing in insights from other land claim cases, I plan to discuss the American efforts of reconciliation and lack of remorse for colonial violence against the native American People.
Paper long abstract:
I have been studying the Native peoples of North America since 1964 when I spent the summer doing fieldwork among the Ramah Navajo and the neighboring Zuni people of New Mexico. I focused on the study of the Zuni theocracy. Several anthropologists have studied the Zuni people since the dawn of academic Anthropology in the late 1870s. Frank Hamilton Cushing, the first Anthropologist to study them, reported that the Zuni complained about the stealth and loss of their aboriginal land, but were never compensated by the United States. Several students of Boas- Krober, Benedict, and Bunzel, among others, were also aware of the loss of Zuni land, reported in their field notes, but they hardly did anything about it. The United States government set up land claim courts in 1946 and asked the Native people to file cases if they wanted compensation. Several tribes, such as the Utes, the Hopi, and the Navajo, went to court, but the Zuni waited until the mid-1970s. Finally, they filed a case against the US government through a prestigious law firm, Boyden, Romney, and Kennedy. I was hired as an expert witness along with a team of archaeologists, historians, and legal scholars. The case was decided in 1990, and a settlement awarding the Zuni tribe some 50 million dollars ( Zuni in Court, University Press of Kansas, 1997).
Relying on my longitudinal study of Zuni and bringing in insights from other land claim cases, I plan to discuss the American efforts of reconciliation and lack of remorse for colonial violence against the native American People.
Abir Lal Mazumder (University of Hyderabad, India)
Paper short abstract:
Colonialism has etched deep into the Indian political and social realms. The paper explores the various national commissions that have set up to reconcile and uplift the lives of denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities who were once criminalized for the way of life and livelihoods.
Paper long abstract:
Colonialism has etched deep into Indian political and social realms. One of the major issues of the post-colonial period still remains a process of digging deep to locate all the various roots that the period continues unravel in our social world. Amongst the palimpsest of legacies, ideas and social structure that British colonialism left behind, one of the least studied are entire communities which were criminalized for their way of life, livelihood and practices. The communities were largely nomadic tribals, pastoralists or peripatetic communities and an extremely minuscule number of them were traditional dacoits. Criminalization and restriction of movements of such communities were made with the express purpose to control such people with the intent to benefit the administration towards collection of revenues of land and exclusion of such communities from forest areas. Generations of people of such communities have suffered the violence of excesses of policing and law courts. They have also never been 'normalized' in the views of communities who share a common living space.
The paper seeks to study how the Independent Indian Government through various National Commissions and other measures have used anthropological theoretical understanding to look into the concerns of such communities. I especially want to elaborate on my experiences of using such commission documents while conducting ethnographic interviews with such communities. The paper seeks to unravel the ideology and views of how the Indian Nation State has gone about in the context of reconciliation and upliftment of these communities in the post-colonial period.
Matthew Robertson (Métis Nation of Ontario)
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces the poststructuralist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Canadian Indigenous studies to examine how different discourses lead to changes in understandings of the world, identity, meaning and practice in Indigenous politics in Canada.
Paper long abstract:
How do different discourses lead to changes in understandings of the world, identity, meaning and practice in Indigenous politics in Canada? This article introduces the poststructuralist theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Canadian Indigenous studies and demonstrates that it is a unique and effective theory for understanding this question. It finds that in the last few decades, two principal discourses regarding Indigenous peoples and colonialism have circulated in the Canadian body politic—namely, (1) “reconciliation” and (2) “Idle No More.” These discourses shape the identities of both Indigenous peoples and settlers, construct understandings of the world, and determine the meaning of related political struggle, leading to real world practice and politics. The reconciliation discourse has at times been effective at becoming a dominant discourse and has often been able to constitute the meaning of important terms such as ‘decolonization.’ It serves to pacify Indigenous resistance to colonialism. Counter-hegemonic discourses on reconciliation such as ‘Idle No More’ have been able to challenge that discourse. Academic literature, newspaper articles, YouTube videos, podcasts developed by Indigenous scholars, public letters and speeches delivered by Canadian politicians are analyzed to examine the utterances and enunciations of the two discourses.
Sabine Mannitz (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt PRIF)
Paper short abstract:
My paper deals with different attempts at undoing the established representations of the Canadian settler state history as found in prominent museum spaces of the North American country. I study these decolonization endeavours comparatively with an eye to narratives, imagery and ownership questions.
Paper long abstract:
Museums play a crucial part in shaping our understanding of the past, of the political violence which made present-time social orders emerge, and of the lasting implications for the present. Post- and decolonial perspectives have exposed the inherent power dynamics and legitimizing functions of many established and hegemonial narratives as well as images within museum spaces, and pointed at their contentiousness: History museums often times reflect colonial biases and euphemistic representations of conquest and subjugation, perpetuating a skewed perspective that is part of legitimizing and power-maintaining structures. Consequently, debates and procedures have emerged regarding not only the repatriation of artefacts and human remains obtained through colonial violence, but also concerning the ways in which conquest and subjugation have been portrayed. Museums are therefore increasingly engaged in the reappraisal of their representations of, e.g. civil wars, national histories of domination, and the human rights violations that went along with or were strategically applied in colonization processes. Museums thus may facilitate processes of ‘unlearning’ conventional readings of the past and its impact on the present.
Against this background, my presentation studies decolonial strategies that are adopted by different museums in Canada where the official journey towards reconciliation started in 2015 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission published its final report, and leading politicians apologized and declared to undo settler colonial domination in the country. I will analyse and compare how two prominent museums have taken up this challenge, namely the Museum of Vancouver and the National History Museum in Ottawa.
Hanna Rask (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses temporal dynamics of structural change in a context of settler colonial institution. It examines processes of ‘undoing’ colonial continuities of child removal in Ontario, Canada, where First Nations are gradually taking over control of their child and family services.
Paper long abstract:
Since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report on history and legacies of Indian Residential Schools in 2015, the Canadian government has committed to pursuing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. To what extent the government’s reconciliation efforts have succeeded in reaching beyond promises to concrete structural changes in society and its institutions, however, remains questioned. Contributing to conceptualization of structural legacy and change in settler colonial context, this paper discusses ongoing reforms in child welfare: what kinds of ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ it takes to turn an assimilative settler colonial institution into one built to respect Indigenous relatedness, self-determination and nationhood.
Canada’s child welfare system has been criticized for repeating the colonial practice of residential schools in continuing to remove Indigenous children from their kin and communities. After decades of pressuring the government(s) for reforms, several Indigenous communities are now building their own systems for child and family wellbeing under a recent federal legislation. Focusing on how these changes are taking shape locally, this paper draws from conversations and interviews with First Nation and non-Indigenous service providers working with First Nation families in Ontario. It examines how temporal articulations of 'change’ in state reconciliation discourses reflect local realities as described by those working on changes in their own communities and agencies. Language that draws a boundary between an unjust past and a ‘new era’ of reconciliation, the paper suggests, overlooks the complex dynamics of continuity and change that characterize these processes within and beyond the child welfare system.
Saana Hansen (University of Helsinki)
Paper short abstract:
Using legal claims against the Danish state seeking compensation for the harm it has done to Greenlandic children, this paper explores how the cost of harm gets measured; and why monetary compensation might be a prioritized form of reparation, even though it can silence lived experiences of harm.
Paper long abstract:
On the 24th of February, 2022 the media in Denmark, as elsewhere, was filled with the terrifying news of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. On the same day, beneath the media radar, the Danish state issued 250.000DKK in compensation for the remaining six of the 22 Greenlandic children displaced from their families in the 1950s and shipped to Denmark to learn Danish in Danish families. After 1,5 years, six of the children stayed in Danish families and16 returned into anorphanage in Nuuk.
Conversely, what had caught headlines one year earlier was the public apology that Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister issued to these ‘experiment children’, after decades of the state refusals to apologize. Denmark had equally refused to be part of the Greenlandic Reconciliation Committee (2014-2017). The PM’s apology ‘opened the door to the darkest period of Denmark’s history’.
Indeed, while a Greenlandic-Danish inquiry over the past wrongdoings has begun, multiple legal claims for compensation are being processed. These claims relate for instance to the the intrauterine devices (IUD) campaign that placed IUDs into thousands of Greenlandic girls and women without their knowledge and consent; and children who were ‘adopted’ to Denmark without the consent of their Greenlandic birth parents. Unlike ‘experiment children’, the claimants are demanding compensation before possible apology.
This paper explores how suffering is monetarized and ‘legally correct’ compensation defined, what forms of wrongs might leave unnoticed in legal claims, and why – nonetheless - both the state and claimants might prioritize compensation over an apology?
Carla Tiefenbacher (Universität zu Köln) Freya Purzer Aragüés (University Cologne)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores modes of colonial remembrance among German and Spanish museum actors, and how their practices engage with ongoing struggles to redefine national memories in both countries. We are interested in how these memory struggles tie into ongoing anti-progressive politics in Europe.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years, Spain and Germany have both faced ongoing struggles to redefine national memory narratives. In Germany, this debate is centered around how to deal with its colonial past alongside an already well-institutionalized culture of remembrance surrounding the Nazi era and the Holocaust. In Spain, struggles concern ways to remember the Civil War and to unearth memories and realities of the Francoist dictatorship. A critical examination of its directly connected colonial past is slowly entering mainstream memory culture. While activism to decolonize (Germany) and to de-Francoize (Spain) have received broad scholarly attention, those voices that have resisted the consolidation of new national memory narratives have not.
Concentrating on actors often positioned by activists as “accomplices of coloniality”, we hope to understand where their resistance stems from and how it acts. Our research focuses on two locations: 1) Cologne, with an ‘association of friends’ of a German ethnographic museum and the German right-wing party AfD (whereby there is no network-like connection between former and latter), and 2) Northern Morocco, with an association of former Spanish colonialists. Said groups engage with private and institutional collections and archives, with exhibitions and forums of debate surrounding memory. Many of our interlocutors shared self-perceptions of marginalization and being silenced, concerns about lost memories, and are engaged in museum practices as a way of home-making. We ask how these similar emotions and motivations inform their different practices of resistance, and how their actions engage with the ongoing boom of right-wing politics in Germany and Spain.