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- Convenors:
-
Heike Becker
(University of the Western Cape)
Cordula Weisskoeppel (Universtiy of Bremen, Germany)
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- Discussant:
-
Julia Binter
(University of Bonn)
- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- History (x) Decoloniality & Knowledge Production (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S65
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 May, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel addresses processes of memory, activism, arts, and the public space in Germany and its former African colonies. Using a memory activism bottom-up approach, it will explore approaches of memory activists in civil society, whose critical interventions often challenge the state's approaches.
Long Abstract:
Panel sponsored by AFRICA: Journal of the International African Institute
Memory and heritage as contested processes of past-based meaning production in the present and in future-making have played a big role in decolonize activism in Germany and its African ex-colonies. The panel addresses memory, activism, arts, and the public space. Using a memory activism bottom-up approach, this will include explorations of different approaches of memory activists in civil society, whose critical interventions often challenge the state's approaches. Presentations will be based on research by the convenors and speakers, who work on decolonizing the public space, memory, and memory activism in the formerly colonised and the colonising nations. We encourage paper proposals from African, German, and international researchers.
The panel focus areas:
a) 'Civic action and the urban public space' engages with contestations around the historical staging of former colonial empire in the built environment, with special emphasis to memorial sites and the naming of streets.
b) 'Museums as spaces of representation and battlegrounds over decolonization' draws attention to the role of museums and decolonization in Germany and its former African colonies, critical approaches and collaborations in museum practice and scholarship.
c) 'The visual and performing arts as spaces, in which the meanings of remembrance are being negotiated through aesthetics and the senses', emphasises the role of the visual and performative arts in memory and memory activism in Germany and the formerly colonised African countries, where artistic interventions have included counter-memorial paintings, installations, films, exhibitions, and performance and theatre productions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 May, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at recent developments after the Joint Declaration of the Namibian and German governments (May 2021). The shortcomings of this accord are summarised and the responses of post and decolonial initiatives in Germany explored. This leads to initiatives to map a way forward.
Paper long abstract:
More than one and a half years after its promulgation, the Joint Declaration of the Namibian and German governments (May 2021) remains in limbo. While it has met strong protests in Namibia, there were also some debates in Germany, including some public protests, meetings and conferences. At the same time, discussions have been getting underway how such protests can be turned into constructive activity. This beckons the question what can be done on levels beyond (or below) the actions of states and governments. Such civil society activism goes back a long way, but there have been discontinuities and breaks that will briefly be mapped to assess current possibilities. Current initiatives of co-operation with Namibian partners, such as the fostering of twin and city partnerships or the establishments of local museums in Namibia related to resistance against German colonialism will be explored. On a local German level, civil society activism also includes the replacement of colonial street names which also beckons the question of listening to Namibian voices concerning new patrons for such streets. Recent experience in Berlin is an important reference.
The analysis will reflect the still incontrovertible postcolonial asymmetry that exists between the two countries and which finds expression in Germany in persistent, though punctured, colonial amnesia. Initiatives taken up are also understood as forms how to overcome such amnesia, i.e., to change some of the national self-image in Germany, inevitably in close and solidary co-operation with Namibian partners. A central vanishing point will be the outstanding German apology.
Paper short abstract:
Since 1972 the German NGO Informationsstelle südliches Afrika (issa) translates and publishes news pieces from the SADC-region in their journal Africa Süd. It the oldest and only German Africa-related popular-scientific journal.
Paper long abstract:
Colonialism colonized the German public space for many centuries. Decolonizing this public space is an ongoing and lengthy process. In the German Erinnerungskultur the two World Wars have played a much bigger role, than Germany's colonial past and it's ex-colonies.
When Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o rightfully demanded to 'decolonize the mind' (1986), the German NGO Informationsstelle südliches Afrika (issa) was already 15 years old and did precisely that. In the early 1970s issa was formed by members of the German Anti-Apartheid-Movement. Since mainstream media houses romanticized and distorted history and realities in many African countries, issa saw the need for creating a critical Counter-public. In a mix of activism and journalism, issa aimed for a balance between popular and scientific news coverage from and about Southern Africa/ SADC. Issa collected, translated and published news on politics, society and culture in Afrika Süd - the oldest and only German-speaking journal on the SADC region.
While issa's decolonizing agenda and strategy did not change much, the context in which our work happened, changed drastically. Since the early 2000s, the internet meant a fragmentation of German public spaces. On the one hand, freely available online content made issa's archive-feeding outdated and superfluous. On the other hand, a multitude of online sources and disinformation campaigns, made critical, informed and digital journalism more necessary. than ever. Decolonizing German public space remains a struggle - issa/ Afrika Süd hopes to continue to be a constructive part of this lengthy process.
Paper short abstract:
Through embodied memory work, I demonstrate how Black, queer and feminist artists in Namibia are exploring diverse forms of memory transmission in places of historical significance. These 'practices of self' belong to a burgeoning, intersectional youth movement in the country.
Paper long abstract:
Cultural commemoration in the form of embodied memory was practiced in Namibia long before German colonial occupation in the 1880s and the War of Independence against South Africa from 1966 to 1989. In recent years, Namibian artists have been offering alternative forms of embodied memory transmission related to these histories. I argue that much of this work is inextricably linked to a new wave of decolonial activism in the country. These practices highlight questions related to history and memory and are a counterpoint to state-sanctioned memorialisation. Some of the recurrent themes are efforts to work through traumatic legacies connected to German colonialism and apartheid, but also to intersectional violence tied to contemporary patriarchy and identity politics. In these settings, queer and feminist methodologies provide a departure point for this embodied memory work in an attempt to go beyond colonial and tribal legacies and nationalised identity politics.
Paper short abstract:
The paper juxtaposes urban space-making practices and imaginaries between Swakopmund City Tour operated by Namibian Germans, and Herero activists around Swakopmund Genocide Museum, presenting alternative memory narratives.
Paper long abstract:
Despite the creation of new post-colonial public memories, legacies of colonialism, especially the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904 are not subject to intense memory work in Namibian public discourse. Non-commemoration of the genocide is behind the trauma among the Herero-Nama some of whom are active in counteracting SWAPO memory politics. Using a memory activism bottom-up approach, the paper attempts to investigate recent urban space-making practices and imaginaries of two different civic actors: Swakopmund City Tour operated by Namibian Germans depicting the “glorious” history of Swakopmund linked to German heritage, which silences the genocide, and a group of Herero activists around Swakopmund Genocide Museum, challenging the monopoly in framing representations of urban heritage and history, and presenting alternative memory narratives. By identifying the activist narratives and practices, and examining the relationships between the two streams, we ask: How is the official memory dealt with in present day-remembrance policies and practices? How is it challenged by Herero political activists? To answer these questions, we use a notion of a mnemoscape (Kössler 2012), including both intangible aspects of the remembrance of collective experience, and a memory landscape, i.e., the concrete shaping and transformation of the urban landscape by memory politics. Methodologically, the paper is based on the outcomes of a short fieldwork in the urban environment of Swakopmund. We argue that the Herero activists as active future-makers (Appadurai 2013) are agents for political transformation and social change and the ones who guide aspirations for urban futures in African societies.
Paper short abstract:
Public calls for decolonization and decolonial practices at ethnographic museums constitute a field of paradoxes, especially in view of notions of “the public(s)”. What does “publicness” and “publics” imply when these notions are approached from a decolonial museum agenda?
Paper long abstract:
The call for restitution is loud, the toppling of colonial monuments highly visualized in media and social networks. The claim for decolonial responsibility of public institutions and museums is present in streets, squares, media and social networks. However, how exactly does activism in public space relate to museums? In what sense(s) are museums public, and who are their publics? How does the publicized call for transformation support, but also interfere with sincere processes of decolonization in and of the museum? And what publics would the museum represent and serve in a truly decolonized society?
This paper will discuss these questions and the paradoxes of public calls for decolonization on the one hand and of decolonial practices at ethnographic museums on the other. It reflects critically on the fact that not only institutions with colonial history, but also contemporary public discourse, policies and often activism are deeply rooted in postcolonial rather than decolonial concepts and underpinnings. A selection of practice-derived examples from the Africa department at Linden-Museum Stuttgart will serve to present these underpinnings and how they relate to some aspects of the complex positionality of museums in their applied effort to decolonize. It will conclude with a reflection on possible notions of “publicness” and “publics” when they are approached from a decolonial museum agenda.
Paper short abstract:
The restitution of cultural objects from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany to the National Museum of Namibia in July 2022, has contributed to broader understandings of the importance for the maintenance of cultural identity, and has drawn attention to decolonization in Germany and Namibia.
Paper long abstract:
After decades of loss of cultural objects and social injustice, many colonized peoples are seeking to revive traditional values and cultural practices as part of a process of renewal intended to strengthen cultural identity, and provide a stimulus for new creativity. The restitution of cultural objects has contributed to broader understandings of the importance for the maintenance of cultural identity, and the protection of cultural diversity. 23 museum pieces from Namibia, including jewelry, tools, fashion and dolls were loaned back from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany to the National Museum of Namibia in July 2022. The items were chosen for their particular historical, cultural and aesthetic significance. This paper will explore how Namibian people seek to restore cultural values and identity and renew their cultures through the objects that have been returned. The sacred and ceremonial artefacts have immense contemporary value as resources for cultural renewal for indigenous peoples that have lost most of their heritage materials during the colonial era and are now seeking to recover from the effects of post-genocide/colonial trauma. This paper will conduct extensive provenance research with communities of origin in order to include more oral histories and memories from the source groups. In this way, the ongoing discussions around the return of 23 artefacts from the Berlin Ethnological Museum are an integral component of a larger set of decolonizing efforts and shifting relationships that are still influenced by the effects of German colonization in Namibia.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores a critical intervention by young Black Hamburg artist at a museum exhibition that claims to be decolonial. The activists appropriate the space by creating a counter exhibition to critically engage with the city’s colonial heritage and its postcolonial commemoration practices.
Paper long abstract:
The observed intervention was motivated by an exhibition "Hey Hamburg! Do you know Duala Manga Bell?", dedicated to the life and assassination of the Cameroonian king during the German colonial period. The group’s name Immer.Wieder.Widerstand (Resistance.Again.And.Again) is self-explaining - the young Black artists came together to challenge the way the museum, which until recently carried the colonial name “Museum für Völkerkunde”, claims to decolonize itself.
German colonial history has been practically erased from today's historiography, although its legacy is unmistakable and decisively shapes the present: the wealth of the city of Hamburg, the racist structures of the German society as well as the white German superiority, can all be traced back to that time.
Acknowledging the lack of educational resources young people created their own learning spaces, by inviting Black postcolonial activists and scholars to a series of workshops. In that process, the group developed a set of questions to guide their intervention:
"How is addressing of the repressed violent past by the museum compatible with exhibiting looted art? How is it possible that European museums still refuse to return looted objects and yet claim to be decolonial? What does it mean for people who have a biographical connection to such looted objects, which often have spiritual connotations, to see them meaninglessly exhibited? How do Black people feel in white institutions and how are they received there?"
Inspired by the joint learning and intensive exchange, the group realised their ideas artistically and presented them as a counter exhibition.
Paper short abstract:
Due to social media, images are more influential than before which increases the need to research movements that shake down the foundations of the historical visualisation of southern Africa by its constituents. This paper's aim is to analyse seeing patterns that puts African interests centre point.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is dedicated to current societal identity debates, whose origins can be traced back to the colonial photography genre and the visualisation of non-white Africans. Colonial photography laid the foundation for racist and racial depiction patterns of certain peoples of the earth and what their ´supposed´ traits and looks were. This paper is about the historical and traditional muting of sub-Saharan Africa through stereotypical images. Despite past and current social and political developments since Africa´s decolonisation, a visual world order narrative that perpetuates a stereotypical image of Africa is still is in place. The long-term effects of colonial stereotyping and othering are visible in attempts of identity-finding processes and the creation of a collective memories. With the power centres and their origins coming from the global north they need readdressing and formally colonised societies shall be independent of those historical connections. The focus is on Namibian and South-African visual narratives that have and are creating their own narratives by taking control of their visual heritage. The country selection is based on a combination of successful anti-colonial movements in the visual, cultural and art sectors which I have coined counter-colonial visualisations. One contemporary example of a change of agency towards the visualisation of colonial pasts is the toppling of colonial statues. Another are works of art that use European colonial archival sources to then Africanise/de-Europeanise them. Instead of reacting to the visual narrative of the global north, a southern-African narrative is created and new cultural structures made.