Literature: Decolonization: Made in Germany

The discussion of the history of German colonialism has certainly reached a new quality in recent years, but the public rejection of Russian artists and the disinvitation of Russian ballet ensembles occurred faster than critical reactions to monuments or streets named after military officers and politicians German colonialism are named. The debates and activities of official German cultural and foreign policy in connection with the restitution demands of former colonies, which sometimes seemed helpless and propaganda-like, once again revealed the deficits in dealing with the colonial past and racism.

The “values-based foreign policy” that was heralded as an international benchmark and export hit was surprisingly pale in this area. The abstract use of this term showed particularly clearly that an approach that is not free from paternalism still prevails. There was hardly any critical distance. Or it seemed as fake as quickly circulated press releases.

The statements made by the official actors cannot even be described as consistently hypocritical. Because only those who actually know better and just want to conceal the truth can hypocrite. Western arrogance is so internalized that ignorance is often not even perceived as a deficit. Even parts of the institutionalized left within the bourgeois democracy of the West – those that were party-political and focused on election surveys and coalitions, those that were union-based and those that called themselves autonomous – always had the problem in their self-image of national interests and their proclaimed internationalism programmatically and in practical actions to be convincingly reconciled.

“The systemic inequalities that were and are the basis of colonialism as a structurally racist injustice system can still be felt today, even in the field of memory politics,” writes Jürgen Zimmerer, who, as a white academic, made an apt comment on Tania Mancheno’s in his short article published publication on »Decolonial Perspectives. “Resistant non-white culture of remembrance” offers. Time and again, the “binary coding of the world” shows itself to be powerful and leads to this opposition of “us” against “them”.

The defense of privilege also has a subliminal effect. Or as Frantz Fanon put it: “one is rich because white, one is white because rich”. “Therefore,” Fanon continued, “Marxist analyzes always have to be stretched somewhat when dealing with the colonial problem.” For this reason alone, it makes sense to take more note of colonial history and racism from the perspective of non-white scientists and action collectives than before.

The activist and scientist Tania Mancheno deals with colonial history, fascism and postcolonialism as well as the effects of these power structures on urban spaces from a consistently decolonial feminist perspective. She has published studies that deal with historical and power-critical urban planning in Paris, Algiers and Hamburg. Her political and practical sphere of influence is primarily Hamburg.

The new book contains ten essays. Thematically, they range from the role of art in the work of remembrance (Dan Thy Nguyen) to the history of black trade union connections (Kiné Alina Schremm), criticism of the politics of forgetting and the celebrated colonial nostalgia on the campus of Hamburg University (Tania Mancheno/Naz Al-Windi) to the examination of a museum policy that is still influenced by colonialism and the handling of German postcolonial places as well as the history of appropriation and expropriation of the transcolonial term “Kanake” (Diana Nacarh).

In his shocking article “Made in Germany,” Ali Fathi reports how the postcolonial violence he experienced during the “Cultural Revolution” in Iran in 1980 not only had a traumatic impact, but also determined his view of history. His serious injuries came from a German-made hand grenade. He is not alone in this, which is why his final remark is: “A few years ago, we, the people living in the world with the fragments of hand grenades made in Germany, began to form a collective. We see ourselves as people who live in a diaspora made by hand grenades… which aims to demilitarize nations… As contemporary witnesses, we are less lonely together.«

The volume stimulates thought, perhaps provokes in some places and is therefore a good contribution to initiating a change of perspective that does not only include non-white culture of remembrance on the fringes and outside of the dominant white curricula. According to Jürgen Zimmerer, only this change of perspective allows “the different perspectives and experiences to be brought into dialogue with one another… A German society in particular, which sees itself as a diverse society, with diverse biographies and experiences, needs a memory landscape that takes this into account .”

Tania Mancheno: Decolonial perspectives. Resistant non-white culture of remembrance. VSA-Verlag, 184 pages, br., €16.80.