Discourses

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

In order to actively participate in and follow the discourse on colonialism, it is important to understand where it all began. How much do you know about German colonial history? Test yourself with our egometer and find out where you stand!

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Decolonisation – In this photo taken Sunday, May 28, 2017, members of the Biafran separatist movement gathered during an event in Umuahia, Nigeria. The members are commemorating their fallen heroes 50 years after Nigeria's civil war saw more than 1 million die to create the state for the Igbo people.

Colonial continuities

Biafraland and the Doppelganger of a Never Past

The upheavals and instability in many African countries are often linked with the legacy of colonialism. Richard Ali’s critical analysis of the situation in Nigeria not only points to other origins of the crises as well but also offers solutions.

decolonial – Videostill from the project “Intervention M21”: The (De)Colonial Glossary, Part 2, “Civilized - Wild”

Language, dominance and racial prejudice

Christianise, humanise, civilise...

For five centuries, five verbs, and a sixth one is on the way, have defined the development of capitalism and the coloniality of power in the world, as Rodrigo Montoya Rojas explains.

decolonial – Videostill from the project “Intervention M21”: The (De)Colonial Glossary, Part 1, Europe - Non-Europe

The challenge of inclusion

Democracy and colonial inheritance in Latin America

To what extent does external dependence on the former imperial powers hamper democracy? Nicolás Lynch Gamero sheds light on the situation in Latin America.

Latitude – Screenshot of the “C& América Latina” website

Contemporary And América Latina

A Thirst for Critical Content

The “Contemporary And” (C&) platform, founded by Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba, has been offering insights into contemporary art and cultural scenes from Africa and the global diaspora for seven years. “The Latest at Goethe” spoke with them.

Restitution – Christian Greco, the director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin

Artworks of African origin

Restitutions? Maybe. Our goal is a Decolonial Archaeology

In the context of the debate about restitution of artworks with an African origin by European museums to their rightful owners, the director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin Christian Greco is encouraging people to view the subject from a different perspective.

Rassismus – Street-Art: George Floyd as motif

For George Floyd

Anti-Racist Street Art

Starting in the neighbouring cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and later around the world, street art was created in response to the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.

Monthly radio programme

Latitude on Air

Latitude on Air broadcasts a two-hour radio programme once a month, in an online stream here on the website. The broadcasts always take place on the last Friday of the month from 11 am to 1 pm. The theme on 25.12.2020 was: “Decolonising Christmas”. All previous programmes can also be accessed here.

Racism – video installation “Black is a beautiful word. I&I” by Jeanette Ehlers

“Europe’s Kitchen”

Suffering is not relative

What happens when, for the German EU Council Presidency, the Goethe-Institut invites artists and strangers to a table? At Europe’s Kitchen in Scotland, video installations by artist Jeannette Ehlers were the focus of the table discussions.

Decolonisation – Reconciliation with the past

Reconciliation in Canada and Germany

Reconciling with the Past

As both Canadians and Germans will acknowledge, reconciliation has come to mean a variety of things, considering the tragic histories of both countries. In this commentary, author Waubgeshig Rice reflects on Canada's more recent actions towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and on his time in Germany.

decolonial – Photo of the book cover “Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals Across Europe”

Exchange between Indian and German intellectuals

Against the Empire

Kris Manjapra explores the tangled cultural politics of Indian and German Intellectuals during the nineteenth century, whose connections continued until after the end of the Second World War. A conversation with the professor of history on his book “Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals Across Europe”.

Shaping the Past

Wavering Monuments

How do monuments shape the commemorative culture? How can they become places of participation? The project “Shaping the Past” of the Goethe-Institut, the Monument Lab and the Federal Agency for Civic Education brings together initiatives from North America and Germany.

End of the dream: Short stories

Achille Mbembe

Articles on the debate The Achille Mbembe Controversy

Achille Mbembe was to give the opening speech of the now cancelled Ruhrtriennale in summer 2020, but there were protests against this invitation. Mbembe is accused of anti-Semitism, among other things. The accusations have sparked a virulent debate about the renowned thinker, German culture of remembrance and postcolonial studies.

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Selected articles on the Mbembe debate

Media Digital Latitude Festival

The digital Latitude festival presented a programme of artistic contributions and debates, exploring the question of how colonial structures impact the present and how we can overcome them. You can find most contributions in Media.

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Illustration (detail): Asinakuthula Collective

Decolonising knowledge production

“Fallen out of history”

Together with the Asinakuthula Collective, the activist Athambile Masola tells the stories of black African women that have not been in history books or Wikipedia so far.

Latitude – In the foreground the “Promenade du Harem” by Jean Louis Gerome, in the background the construction site of the Hotel Royal Atlantis in Dubai.

Re-Visiting Orientalism

Cliché meets reality

In the online exhibition “Re-Visiting Orientalism” of the Goethe-Centre Baku, orientalist paintings from the 19th century meet current video recordings. The artist Andréas Lang explains how orientalist imagery has shaped the view of the Middle East, Asia and North Africa to this day.

Colonial history – View of Tianjin from a skyscraper

Coming to terms with the past

The colony in your head

Austria’s colonial history is generally considered insignificant, and is relatively unknown throughout the population. Even the author Miriam Hübl was surprised when she found out during a trip to the port of Tianjin in Eastern China that Austria once owned territory here. What’s left over from this time? Searching for traces in Vienna.

Racism – Marked by a new patriotism: the 2006 World Cup in Germany

Remembrance Politics

The ambivalence of coming to terms with history

Germany and the Germans brought unprecedented suffering to the world during the Nazi era. The way Germany dealt with its past is considered an example of a successful historical reappraisal. But does that really correspond to reality? Social scientist Anna Delius investigates how the two German societies dealt with National Socialism and the Holocaust after 1945.

Latitude – Morocco, Taouz, Merzouga, Erg Chebbi, signpost to Sahara desert

What is “sub-Saharan Africa”?

Geopolitics or blatant sophistry?

The reference to all of Africa except the predominantly Arab North as “sub-Sahara” not only defies the fundamentals of geography but also smacks of stereotypical racist labelling, according to Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe.

Over three days, “Latitude” presented artistic contributions and debates.

Suppressed Memory

Messy, Painful, and Long Overdue

What role does the colonial era play in the cultures of remembrance in Namibia, Germany, or India and how does that era influence the present? Urvashi Butalia, Nelago Shilongoh, Mark Terkessidis, and René Aguigah discussed this at the “Latitude” festival.

Latitude: Medical staff help each other put on protective equipment at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) clinic in the Mathare slum of Nairobi, Kenya, May 28, 2020.

The pandemic versus tech

African response(s) to a global crisis

COVID-19 has spread across the globe through the interconnectedness that hyper-globalisation has created. Our responses and coping mechanisms are predominantly hinged on digital technologies, and on our respective governments’ actions, summarizes Nanjira Sambuli.

Colonial Era: Young recruits in the training battalion in Sidi Ifni, 1963-64.

Coming to terms with the colonial past

Overdue in Spain

In Spain a growing number of art and research projects are combating the loss of colonial memory. However, they are barely noticed and the lack of political will to engage with them is a wall that is difficult to break through.

Performance by Trixie Munyama at the festival “The Burden of Memory” in November 2019 in Yaoundé.

Remembering in Dance

“Stop putting make-up on the scars of the past”

The dancer and choreographer Trixie Munyama from Namibia speaks about forms of memory and the examination of pain, grief and rituals in dealing with the colonial past.

Colonial Era: “Beating in the Court of Mongomo”: The painting by Filiberto Obama Nsue, called “Fili”, from 1975, shows guards beating up a Guinean

Spain and Equatorial Guinea

Divergent Memories

Spain had only one colony in Black Africa: Spanish Guinea, today's Equatorial Guinea. The Spanish hardly remember it at all, says historian Gustau Nerín. But Guinea was painfully shaped by the colonial period.

Decolonisation: Works of art by South African artist William Kentridge are exhibited in Cape Town, South Africa, Friday, Aug. 23, 2019. Kentridge's work of videos, graphic tapestries, charcoal drawings, woodcut prints, sculptures and sound installations combine in his largest single show in which he explores compelling themes including the country's apartheid history and the participation of Africans in World War.

Aesthetics and Advocacy

Art cannot overthrow a government, but…

To what extent can art change or shape political discourse in the society? South African artist and curator Molemo Moiloa sheds light on how artists in Africa have and continue to interrogate unfavourable power relations.

Colonial history: Sale of slaves in the streets of Havana, Cuba, in the 19th century. School wall painting (color print), 1950.

Colonies in the Caribbean

Scandinavia and the slave trade

When she tells people that she’s researching Scandinavian colonial history, she often encounters a lack of understanding: Lill-Ann Körber from Aarhus University in Denmark on repressed facts.

Restitution: 29.08.2018, Berlin: Bones of two victims of the genocide 1904-1908 in German Southwest Africa lie in front of the altar during a ceremony in the French Friedrichstadtkirche. At the invitation of the Protestant Church and the Council of Churches in Namibia, the mortal remains are returned during a ceremony.

Restitution of cultural objects

The Sarr-Savoy report from a legal perspective

Creating a reliable framework for dealing with looted art from colonial contexts requires focusing on legality and justice, according to international law expert Vincent Negri.

Global South: Computer technology with iHub, Kenya

Simply Complicated

Technological Solutions in the global South

Emerging technologies present opportunities for countries in the global South to realise exponential change and growth. But just as abundant as the potential is, so are the bottlenecks. Nanjira Sambuli explains.

The German-language picture book market still struggles with dark-skinned protagonists. One way to boost diversity is to publish translations.

Children’s and young adult literature

Different from the others

Children’s books shape the way we see the world as we grow up. There have thus been growing calls in recent years for children’s book publishers to reflect social and cultural diversity, states Sonja Matheson from the publisher Baobab Books in Basle.

Ensemble from “Die Kränkungen der Menschheit”.

Colonial heritage in the performing arts

Reversing the colonial gaze

There has been an ongoing conversation on post-colonialism and the racism associated with it. Anta Helena Recke’s production “Die Kränkungen der Menschheit” (The Mortifications of Humanity) at the Munich Kammerspiele is an example of how theatres can address this topic.

Latitude: Marking the geographical latitude of zero degrees as a yellow equatorial line, equatorial monument La Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World) in San Antonio de Pichincha, Ecuador, South America

Going Past Colonialism

Latitude: A return to Point Zero

Western imperialism still divides the world into the global North and global South. The Kenyan performance scholar Mshai Mwangola calls for a critical re-evaluation of the the Equator as latitude 0°.

Illustration from the book “Nelly und die Berlinchen – Rettung auf dem Spielplatz (Nelly And The Berlin Girls – Playground Rescue) by Karin Beese

Children of Colour in picture books

Hero(in)es wanted

What about Children of Color, can they be hero(in)es in a picture book? Communication scientist, writer and editor Chantal-Fleur Sandjon explores this question.

World literature – from whose perspective?

Critique of the canon from a postcolonial perspective

‘Dark’ Africa

What constitutes valuable literature? Even now, historical power hierarchies still determine how texts are perceived and selected, writes Andrea Geier, Professor of Modern German Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Trier. Postcolonial critique of the canon is aimed at these characteristically Western ideals.

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.

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, Elisabeth Wellershaus notes.

"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.

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

How can colonialism be explained to young people today? Guillaume Le Quintrec is the managing editor of binational history textbooks for high schools in France and Germany, which strive to present every point of view.

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

Decolonise 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, says Ina Holev.

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, explains its founder and director Tali Nates.

"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, says author Petra Schönhöfer.

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, Elisabeth Wellershaus formulates.

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, writes Maximilian Henning.

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.

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, the head of the non-governmental organisation Wiki in Africa, wants to change that: with the project “Wiki Loves Women”.

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.

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.

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, writes Hans Dembowski.

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, says Andreas Eckert.

Australian Aboriginal artist Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula at work.

Non-European Art

“We don't want to be like you”

Western art museums rarely exhibit contemporary, indigenous art. Ethnologist Mona Suhrbier believes that the art world has to rethink how it approaches the unfamiliar.