Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany

Thiemeyer, Thomas

doi:10.1086/703964

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Others hope that the project could point in the direction of a new cosmopolitan German culture of remembrance (e.g. Thiemeyer 2019). Following several delays and the setback of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Humboldt Forum celebrated its digital and subsequently its physical open-ing in December 2020 and July 2021.…”

Section: Absent Presencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive

Hilden¹

2022

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The Berlin Sound Archive (Lautarchiv) consists of an extensive collection of sound recordings, compiled for scientific purposes in the first half of the 20th century. Recorded on shellac are stories and songs, personal testimonies and poems, glossaries and numbers. This book engages with the archive by consistently focusing on the colonial conditions under which the recordings were produced. With a firm commitment to postcolonial scholarship, Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive is a historical ethnography of a metropolitan institution that participated in the production and preservation by colonial structures of power and knowledge. The book examines sound objects and listening practices that render the coloniality of knowledge fragile and inconsistent, revealing the absent presences of colonial subjects who are given little or no place in established national narratives and collective memories.

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Section: Absent Presencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive

Hilden¹

2022

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“…Exhibiting parts of the vast collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, among others, and erected on the former site of the GDR's Palace of the Republic, the project has since its official parliamentary confirmation in 2002 become a national matter of public concern (Binder 2009). It has been a "catalyst for critique" (Bose 2017b: 127) for simmering conflicts and frictions regarding nationalism and religious identity, migration and cosmopolitanism, racism and discrimination, urban politics, as well as Germany's public reckoning with its difficult imperial, socialist, and fascist pasts (see Mandel 2008;Bach 2017;Thiemeyer 2019). Germany's colonial project took centre stage in this context through the hesitant unravelling of its entanglements with Berlin's museum collections (Zimmerman 2001;Penny 2002;Penny and Bunzl 2003;Perraudin and Zimmerer 2011;Eckert and Wirz 2013).…”

Section: Fieldwork: Berlin Convergencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Across Anthropology

Oswald¹,

Tinius²

2020

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understands these institutions as caught up in a temporal dilemma: being at the same time sites for the negotiation of contemporary identity politics and the recognition of colonial pasts, while remaining caught up in a paradoxical anachronism. "What, then, constitutes the contemporary at a time of anachronism?", he asks, prodding at the fraught relation between contemporary art, modernism, and post-modernism to think of a possible anthropology of the contemporary. Note1. We also do not intend to associate the concerns articulated in this book to those revolving around posthuman debates on robotics and artificial intelligence (Braidotti 2013; Atanasoski and Vora 2019). In this sense, our propositions are related to but distinct from experimental methodologies and analytics, such as the "alter-anthropological" (Hage 2012: 286), where "critical anthropological thought can generate new problematics (…)", and the "para-sitical" offered for debate by Deeb and Marcus (2011) to reflect on the creation of ethnographic situations.2. The research that led to this piece was also funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation as part of the research award for Sharon Macdonald's Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. We are grateful to CARMAH and all colleagues who contributed to making our joint research stimulating and productive. Additionally and in particular, we wish to thank Sharon Macdonald, Thomas Fillitz, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on our introduction.

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Making Germany’s Hidden Yet Omnipresent Colonial Past Visible

Schveitzer

2024

Cultural Inquiry

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For thirty years, Berlin was the metropole of the German colonial empire. For most German citizens, however, this statement is relatively unknown. Even though there is an increased interest in decolonial praxis within Berlin-based cultural and educational settings, the persistence of such efforts and their implications within larger society is hard to assess in advance. In response, this text proposes a walking tour through Berlin, highlighting places related to this part of German history. In doing so, it demonstrates the presence of many references to colonialism spread through the city and, more significantly, many initiatives and projects seeking to make this past more visible. By offering an overview of four specific locations within the city, this chapter hopes to critically reflect on the extensive trajectory of the ongoing struggles for historical reparations.

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Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive

Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive

Across Anthropology

Making Germany’s Hidden Yet Omnipresent Colonial Past Visible

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