Initiatives and activist groups in various European cities are making visible the traces of colonialism in urban spaces for already more than a decade. Since the US-American Black Lives Matter movement spread to Europe in 2020, anti-racist protesters have turned their actions against the visible traces celebrating colonial rule, thus raising public awareness of Europe’s colonial legacy. Post- and decolonial memory activists are increasingly questioning the ways in which the history of colonial violence has been made forgotten, and they are offering perspectives on how it can be remembered in the present. The persistent traces of the colonial past reveal how colonial structures impacted the former metropoles, as well as how colonial imaginaries have developed an afterlife in the present, as they have often remained unchallenged.
The LAB examines the various traces of the colonial in selected countries and cities. It asks about the (dis)continuities of the colonial in the present, the ways in which the colonial past has been silenced, and the slow changes we can observe. For example, what is the relationship between the glorification and relativism of colonialism and the demand for recognition, restitution, and reparation? The LAB is also interested in uncovering the multidirectional references drawn to the colonial past in the course of history. In this respect, the entanglement of different memory practices is central: What role does the fascist/national socialist or the socialist past in the former GDR play in working through colonial crimes? Looking at similarities and differences should invite us to discuss perspectives on remembrance practices that go beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Likewise, we also want to reflect on our positionality as scholars, activists, scholar-activists in shaping the practices of remembrance and working to transform the way colonial legacies are dealt with.
Workshop Program:
12.00–12.15: Welcome and Introduction: Post- and decolonial memory activism in a European perspective
12.15–13.00: Panel and Discussion
Linda Boukhris (Paris): The production of a counter-hegemonic narrative of the urban space as a reparative praxis: archiving futures in the suburbs of Paris
Jadel Andreetto (RIC, Bologna): “Odonomastic guerrilla warfare”: The recontextualization of colonial street names in the Cirenaica district of Bologna and beyond.
13.00–13.20: Coffee Break
13.20–14.00: Keynote
Jonathan Bach (The New School for Social Research, NY): Imperial ambiguities: Colonial pasts in Germany’s present
14.00–14.15: Coffee Break
14.15-15.00: Panel and Discussion
Johanna Kreft (Birmingham): Beyond ‘colonial amnesia’ – Transformative postcolonial memory activism in Germany
Miriam Friz Trzeciak (Cottbus): Multidirectional forms of remembering and forgetting. The example of a post-colonial and post-socialist city tour
15.00–16.00: Workshop
1. Social movements/memory acitvism and institutional transformation: Thinking about an “Ostvernetzung” within the decolonize network
2. Activism vs. science? Scholar-activism and perspectives on collaborative research
3. Transnational memory: Confronting the colonial past beyond the nation
This event will be hybrid. If you would like to participate online or in presence, please register at koloniales-erbe-thueringen@uni-erfurt.de.
Speakers
Jadel Andreetto is an activist, novelist, screenwriter, musician, and a founding member of the Resistenze In Cirenaica project. He served as a writer in residence at MIT and has been a guest at various symposiums hosted by prestigious institutions such as Wellesley College, New York City University, the University of Toronto, and Queens College.
Resistenze In Cirenaica is a think tank active since 2015, founded and driven by a group of experts from various cultural fields, ranging from historical research to music. This project is renowned for pioneering the concept of “odonomastic guerrilla warfare”, which involves recontextualizing or hacking street signs, commemorative plaques, and monuments.
Jonathan Bach is professor of global studies and faculty affiliate in anthropology at The New School in New York. His work looks at memory, material culture, urban change and social transformation in Germany and China. His books include What Remains: Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany (Columbia University Press 2017), (German edition: Die Spuren der DDR: Von Ostprodukten bis zu den Resten der Berliner Mauer, Reclam Verlag, 2019), and, as co-editor, Re-Centering the City: Global Mutations of Socialist Modernity (UCL Press 2020) and Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Current research includes how contemporary Germany is confronting the injustices and legacy of colonialism.
Linda Boukhris is a lecturer at the University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne. Her research in Geography has focused on the politics of nature, race and tourism in Costa Rica. She is particularly interested in counter-imaginaries of nature, based on Afro-diasporic socio-ecologies conceived as ecologies of liberation. She is currently conducting research on the politics of heritage and the legacies of colonialism in European urban spaces.
Johanna Kreft is a German Studies PhD Researcher, examining postcolonial memory culture in Germany and the role of transformative social activism at the University of Birmingham. Prior to commencing her PhD, she gained an MA in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Birmingham in 2019, then worked for a while in the educational sector before returning to academic work in 2021.
Miriam Friz Trzeciak (Dr. phil.) is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Interculturality/UNESCO Chair of Heritage Studies at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg and holds a PhD from the University of Kassel. Their research interest include migration and mobility studies, gender and queer studies, postcolonial and postsocialist studies, queer subculture, critical heritage and memory studies, social movements in Latin America, and activist-dialogical methodologies. In their habilitation, they analyze different dimensions of the entanglement of postcolonial and postsocialist power relations.