Discourses

Different positions on the effects of colonialism: debates, interviews and short stories.

End of the dream: Short stories

Photo (detail): Alberto Lingria © picture alliance / AP Photo

José Mendonça
Independence Square

“The dream of democracy is over”: José Mendonça narrates a story of despair, turmoil, lawlessness and inequality in postcolonial Angola.
Photo (detail): epa afp Joe © dpa photo report

Panashe Chigumadzi
The god of the First Testament

Tambisa no longer believes in the God of European civilisations and draws inspiration from grandmother, who practices a mixture of Christianity and African popular beliefs.
Photo (detail): EPA/RADU SIGHETI / POOL © dpa-Report

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
The Stations of the Moon

Having fled an arranged marriage years ago, a mother later saves her daughter from a repressive cultural ritual: in Somalia, then an Italian colony.
Photo (detail): Gilles Barbier © picture alliance /imageBROKER

Luis Noriega
The Strip

Even after independence, the most heinous human rights violations remain a terrible reality in Colombia. About the "strip", however, the public remains silent.
Photo (detail): Kristin Palitza © picture-alliance

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Dreams and Assorted Nightmares

A man marries a second wife and pushes his first wife to the periphery. A story of superstition, vengeance, fetishes and curses in postcolonial Nigeria.

Do we really live in an era of post-colonialism?

Do We Really Live in the Era of Postcolonialism?

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Debate now

More debates

Felwine Sarr 2019 in Vienna at the Tipping Point Talks, facing a full audience at the Odeon Theatre.

Impulses from the cradle of humanity

“What we need to learn from Africa”

Senegalese economist, author and musician Felwine Sarr is one of the most active contemporary African intellectuals. During the Tipping Point Talks in Vienna, which were organised by the ERSTE Foundation, he explained how a satisfactory level of prosperity can be achieved for the majority of the world’s population.

French national cemetery for the fallen soldiers at Hartmannswillerkopf, a main scene of the Franco-German mountain war in World War I, where soldiers from the colonies of Germany and France also had to fight and lose their lives. The French alone sent 450,000 Africans to the front against Germany.

Common culture of memory

Colonial history in textbooks

Including different readings of colonization and decolonization: an interview with Guillaume Le Quintrec, co-editor of a binational history book for high schools in France and Germany

Ascari faithfulness in German East Africa. (German Schutztruppen with native teams in the defense against an attack). Picture postcard after watercolour, 1918, by Fritz Grotemeyer

The First World War in the colonies

Africa has a past too

For Europe, 1914 was the start of that era described by Eric Hobsbawm as the “short 20th century” and “Age of Extremes”. Yet few people are aware that the First World War also caused untold damage in many different African countries.

Equality in the global economy

Interrogate globalisation

What role can Africa play in the globalized economy? And how can the continent remain true to itself and at the same time reinvent itself?The Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr in a video interview.

"Ethics of passage"

Against Identitarian Withdrawal

As nations and communities increasingly withdraw into their identitarian shells, postcolonial theorist Achille Mbembe counters with an ethics of ”passage, circulation and transfiguration” that breathes fresh air into the confines of increasingly musty national spaces.

Everyday life in Zimbabwe: Crowds in one of the few public places with free WLAN. People in Mutare, about 270 kilometers east of the capital Harare, 23 November 2019. According to a recent independent report, Zimbabwe has one of the most expensive mobile data sources in the world. The high data costs are mainly attributed to the fact that the country has relatively few mobile internet providers and that it is a landlocked country.

Digital Divide

Decolonize the Internet

The internet is characterised by power structures. Digital colonialism shows how established hierarchies can also become entrenched on the World Wide Web. But activists and artists are growing increasingly resistant.

Africa again at a disadvantage

“If there’s inequality in the analogue world, it’s the same for the digital world”

Hardly anyone in Africa writes for Wikipedia – especially not women. Isla Haddow-Flood wants to change that. An interview with the head of the non-governmental organisation Wiki in Africa about the project "Wiki Loves Women".

The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

Painful Pasts as a Catalyser

Based on their past experiences, South Africans tend to see all human rights violation through the prism of ‘white vs black’. The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre remind that racism is beyond the colour line.

"Museum Conversations" in Windhoek

It’s About the People

The African cultural infrastructure is presently at a turning point. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Goethe-Institut, highlights the positive and mutual interest in the urgent questions of postcolonial museum work in his keynote address at the opening of the final international Museum Conversations conference in Windhoek.

The rainforest is on fire: smoke and flames in the Amazon region near Porto Velho.

Climate change and Neocolonialism

Climate colonialism as a new power structure

Wasteful use of the earth’s resources is a leading cause of environmental disasters, and the wealthy industrialized countries are benefiting from the exploitation of developing countries.

Human remains of the Moriori and Mâori will be covered with a cloth in a ceremonial ceremony on 18.05.2017 at the Übersee-Museum in Bremen.

Controversial cultural artefacts

Bought, stolen, gifted, swapped, loaned?

The restitution debate is creating quite an impact. And yes, it’s essential for it to be held – as publicly and passionately as possible, says Wiebke Ahrndt, Director of the Übersee-Museum Bremen.

The Prince of Wales watches a traditional dance in the Ugandan capital Kampala during a Commonwealth Meeting

Intangible heritage

Invite the elders to the schools!

Is the orally transmitted cultural heritage of Africa in danger? An interview with Abiti Nelson, curator of ethnography and history at the Uganda Museum.

The artist Ndidi Dike on the opportunities Africa offers.

Artists in the global South

The chance of the continent

“Not everything good must necessarily come from the West”: The artist Ndidi Dike on the opportunities offered by the African continent – and why we should deal more closely with production conditions.

Art gallery and music shop in the historical Pelurinho District of Salvador Bahia

Artists with a migration background

Against Western thought patterns

Decolonisation has become a thing in the European cultural environment. The only question is how sustainable this development is.

Colonial patterns

Doesn't that ever stop?

The Internet reproduces the historical problems of our society: sexism and colonial patterns. Net activist Nanjira Sambuli fights for technologies against these traditional ideologies.

Dangers of “single cultures”

“Why do we believe that difference is a problem?”

The Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe talks about xenophobia, nationalism, the place of the foreigner, the dangers of “single cultures” and spaces for articulating difference.

Hendrick Fourmile, member of the Gimuy Walubara Yidindji, holds a traditional smoking ceremony at the Museum Five Continents during the ceremony to return the remains of an indigenous Australian.

Redefinition of ethnographic collections

The museum inside-out

Are ethnological museums in the global North simply collections of colonial booty, as some critics have claimed since the end of the 20th century? In response to this accusation, Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University, also demonstrates a different kind of museum work.

Nanjira Sambuli, Digital Equality Advocacy Manager for the World Wide Web Foundation, speaks during a press briefing on the report of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, at the UN headquarters in New York, on June 10, 2019

New chasms between rich and poor

Equality in the Digital Age

An interview with Nanjira Sambuli: The digital equality advocate spells out the steps necessary for bridging the knowledge gap in the digital age.

Rethinking international relations

How the Global South can protect itself from digital exploitation

Not everyone benefits equally from the internet by a long way: the Global South gets exploited by American and Chinese digital platforms in particular.

Mario Pfeiffer’s video installation “again” focuses on an incident in Saxony, where villagers presumably tied a refugee to a tree.

Anti-colonial Art

We Don’t Need Another Hero

The art world expected great things from the tenth edition of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art – the first to be curated by an African woman. But the show refused to produce a simplified and linear narrative of colonialism.

Mariana Castillo Deball “Newspaper Works”. In: “South As A State Of Mind #7”, Documenta 14 #2, 2016, p. 76–77.

Global North

Learning from the South

Quinn Latimer, Editor-in-Chief of documenta 14 Publications, speaks about the South as a learning process, documenta’s public programme taking place in Athens and language as a liberating act.

Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, who was responsible for the Herero massacre, with his unit in the then colony of German South-West Africa in 1904;

Re-examining

The Past Is Never Dead

Germany’s colonial past entails a considerable burden of responsibility that continues to this day. This is evident in debates about ethnological collections, the renaming of streets – and in the question of how to deal with guilt.

New point of view

“We are all postcolonial“

“I live in South Africa, in a so-called ‘post-apartheid society’.” A conversation with the curator Gabi Ngcobo about ways to reconsider history and memory.

Today, many of the big challenges that governments face are international, including the climate crisis and financial stability. No nation state can manage these things on its own.

Postcolonial world order

International community must develop in global cooperation

The Colonial Era is generally considered to have ended in the final years of the past millennium. Though many former colonies are now among the least developed countries, it would be a mistake to blame this state of affairs entirely on Colonialism.

Colonial Greed

Ten things the North has always craved for from the South

The industrialized world has for centuries depended on exploiting the countries in the global south. The list of products from the south which have enriched the first world is long. A short history of colonial greed.

Projects on the subject discourses

All Projects

Latitude

Discourses

End of the dream: Short stories

Independence Square

The god of the First Testament

The Stations of the Moon

The Strip

Dreams and Assorted Nightmares

Do We Really Live in the Era of Postcolonialism?

More debates

How Colonial Are Your Travel Pictures?

How Colonial Is a Flight to the Moon?

When is a tattoo culturally appropriated?

How Colonial Are the 599,000,000 Results of Your Most Recent Google Search?

How Colonial are your Beauty Standards?

Do We Really Live in the Era of Postcolonialism?

“What we need to learn from Africa”

Colonial history in textbooks

Africa has a past too

Interrogate globalisation

Against Identitarian Withdrawal

Decolonize the Internet

“If there’s inequality in the analogue world, it’s the same for the digital world”

Painful Pasts as a Catalyser

It’s About the People

Climate colonialism as a new power structure

Bought, stolen, gifted, swapped, loaned?

Invite the elders to the schools!

The chance of the continent

Against Western thought patterns

Doesn't that ever stop?

“Why do we believe that difference is a problem?”

The museum inside-out

Equality in the Digital Age

How the Global South can protect itself from digital exploitation

We Don’t Need Another Hero

Learning from the South

The Past Is Never Dead

“We are all postcolonial“

International community must develop in global cooperation

Ten things the North has always craved for from the South

Projects on the subject discourses

Fear & Fever

Echoes of the South Atlantic

Power Talks

North-Southern Divan