Decolonial approaches became a highly absorbed perspective in the last years in the social and cultural sciences. At the same time new decolonial and antiracist protests in the Iberian countries but also in Germany received greater attention and mobilisation. While postcolonial theories often address issues from a very academic and theoretical point of view, activist groups and artists who draw attention to (neo-)colonialism strongly point to the daily lives of racialised and colonised people and how to change hegemonic grand narrations of local and national histories. The attempt of the International Symposium Decolonial Iconoclasm: City – Memory – Participation was to bring together young researchers, activists, artists, and students from Portugal and Germany. It took place at the Faculdade de Letras of the Universidade de Lisboa and was held in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
The keynote was given by TERESA PINHEIRO (Chemnitz) about Deconstructing the Empire in Public Art Intervention which outlined the relationship of monuments and social changes in Portugal. The question was raised if and how imperial and colonial semantics, which were materialised through writing in stone in urban spaces since the 1930s as part of the colonialistic and nationalistic identity during the authoritarian dictatorship of Salazar, had been re-written in the socialist ‘post’-coloniality after 1974 or are going to be overwritten by post- and decolonial appropriations in in the future. While the children theme park Portugal dos Pequenitos in Coimbra, which had been opened in 1940, is still arranged from a colonial point of view (e.g. the uncritical presentation of the voyages of discovery, see also Silva 20161) and the exhibition Mundo Português in 1940 are examples for the Imperial Mystique (the invisible empire), after the Carnation Revolution critical questions on the Portuguese coloniality arose. Monuments and memorials of the Salazar regime were beheaded or wrapped up to erase the memories in stone. Nevertheless, the invisible empire continued in romanticisation of the ‘great discoverers’, which are linked to the idea of the ‘civilisation of the savages’ in terms of an understanding of being the ‘superior coloniser’ in contrast to other colonial powers in Europe (Lusotropicalism). Although the colonial wars ended in 1974, the colonial continuities remained. In 2017/18 critical voices addressed the planning of a museum of Portugal’s colonial history which blatantly ignores or at least understates the role of violence and exploitation (see Barchfield 20182), which at the same time had been issued by the Exhibition Racism and Citizenship3 in Lisbon. Meanwhile the World of Discoveries, self-portrayed as a “Museu Interativo e Parque Temático” and opened in 2014 in Porto, clarifies its understanding of the imperial, colonial and violent past for their interested audience: “Portugal played a leading role in this process for centuries, creating new maritime routes and circulating people, animals and plants all around the world”4 (see also the critique by Rito 20185). Pinheiro states that the past is still very present, but the narratives are challenged more and more nowadays in Portugal. There’s a shift from silencing and destruction after 1974 to criticism and counter-narrations since the 2000s.
In the first two panels the speakers made different approaches to discuss postcolonial continuities on different scales. While the first panel mainly focussed on Portuguese perspectives in the Global North like colonial structures, materialisations and migration, the second panel gave different insights into the Global South using examples of social movements in Latin America.
VIKTORIA HOHLFELD and MATHILDE HONECKER (Chemnitz), talked about the colonial continuities and postcolonial discourse in Portugal. In their research using Google Street View and the Internet they identify colonial objects and post-/decolonial critics in the urban space, which they understand as a palimpsest, which is re- or overwritten, analogous to Pinhero. They identify the still ongoing neo-colonial economic interconnections between the former colonies and Portugal or the often descriptive or positively connoted presentation of the age of discoveries and colonialism in Portuguese school books. They also argue that after 1974 there has been a lack of coming to terms with the imperial, colonial and racist history (or histories) and its continuities which challenged decolonial approaches in public discoursed at least since the 2000s.
SIMONE FRANGELLA (Lisbon) followed the paths of Brazilian migrants in Lisbon through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2015. While in the 1990s mainly “highly qualified” Brazilians migrated, Portugal became a space of arrival for unskilled Brazilian workers and laborers in the 2000s. A significant community of Brazilians settled in Arroios, a neighbourhood in downtown Lisbon characterized by old and rundown housing and inhabited by an aging and poor Portuguese population. Taking advantage of the centrality of the neighbourhood and the low value of its housing rents, an important Brazilian community established there, with its trades and social practices, and establishing relations of assistance with the neighbourhood’s inhabitants. These relations are marked by both racialized and stereotypical representations associated with Brazilians, and by their own recourse to imaginaries of mutual belonging inherited from the colonial world, which they activate to seek for adaptive advantages in the host society.
JOE GREEN (Chemnitz) took a closer look at the colonial memory inscribed in Lisbon’s street names after 1974. In the north-east of Lisbon, the Estado Novo sought to name the streets of the new settlements after cities in Portuguese colonies and combatants in the colonial wars (Green 2022:696), the Bairro das Colónias. Attempts changing colonial names – including their memorial implications – however were rejected, arguing they are established and ‘traditional’. Only ten streets were renamed since in the city, mostly due to a connection to the Salazar regime. It can be questioned if the change from Bairro das Colónias to Bairro das Novas Nações and renaming streets to the former colonies (Rua de Angola, Rua de Moçambique etc.) in 1975 also changed the colonial memory of the city or rather just made it more invisible and connectable to the idea of Lusotropicalism. Joe Green shows that there are very few references to decolonial aspirations or anti-colonial resistance in the historical capital of colonialism.
GABRIELA MIRANDA (Jena) discussed the demands of the Mapuche community in the social outburst in Chile between October 2019 and March 2020. In her speech she argues that the indigenous people faced two historical forms of colonisations. The resistance against the Spanish colonisation led to violence and a huge loss of territory in the 16th and 17th century. With the regime of Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1988 the Mapuche, which nowadays are still 12 percent of the Chilean population, faced new expropriations and ongoing discriminations, which resulted in protests, a re-militarisation and military interventions in the remaining territories. The conflict between the protestants and the politicians are highly dynamic since alliances with feminist and environmental movements had been formed, while it came to the normalisation of police violence. Political goals include the pursuit of autonomy, the reclaiming of territories, the release of political prisoners, demilitarisation by the state and the recognition of the Mapuche language as an official language.
FELIPE CASTRO (Jena) describes the social outbursts in Colombia since the end of 2019. Mainly caused in governmental violence and the social discontent with the neoliberal economic measures, two social movements formed a union since they already shared a common origin in the Cauca region in southwestern Colombia: Afro-Indigenous groups of the Colombian Pacific and the indigenous Minga community. Forming an alliance, resulting in coordinated collective interventions (e.g., the overturning of statues), strengthens the reach and the political power for a broader anti-racist and anti-colonial resistance in Colombia.
JORDY PACHECO (Jena) drew the attention to the aesthetic activism in Ecuador´s contemporary Kichwa literature (poems and excerpts from semi-structured interviews with Kichwa writers) which appeared in protests in October 2019 and June 2022. Both mobilisations were caused by ongoing social injustice, which also has its origin in colonialism and racism. Based on the linguistic practice of renaming place names (which still are not changed officially), he sees the re-appropriation of indigenous place names and therefor the usage and transmission of the indigenous language as a decolonial practice of resistance to bring about social and political change.
In the discussion the question on the comparability of Latin-American and German de-/postcolonial initiatives had been raised. Given that the last three speakers have insights on both local perspectives, they see few similarities apart from a loser exchange. While postcolonial initiatives in Germany often get criticised for being too academic, the decolonial struggles of activist groups in Latin America seem to be even more linked to academic discourses, which in both cases (re-)produces exclusions of marginalised groups and individuals.
The day ended with a conversation between the activist and rapper FLÁVIO ZENUN ALMADA a.k.a. “LBC Soldjah” and JONAS PRINZLEVE (Lisbon). He states: “One cannot speak about Lisbon without the past, the slavery of African people”, which also goes for the grand narration of the western industrialisation or the so called ‘discoveries’, which in his eyes were a violent political design. Issuing segregation and racial profiling in Lisbon as well as postcolonial neighbourhoods and forms of resistance (e.g., collective debates, writings or readings), he argues rap and hip-hop can be a ‘school’ for critics on social problems.
On the second day the focus of the symposium switched to the topic to perspectives of art and decolonization from the perspective of activists and artists on decoloniality in Lisbon and student research projects on postcoloniality in Germany.
The third panel started with LEONOR ROSAS (Lisbon) and her speech on the possibilities of inscribing an antiracist and decolonial counter-narrative in Lisbon’s public space and memorial landscape. She expands the materialist view on stone with an understanding as a performance and practice with bodies. While ‘strong’ memories refer to the official, national grand narrations of the discoveries, which nowadays rebrand the discoverers as entrepreneurs, she argues that ‘weak’ memories of slaves and migrants are not supported by the state but are part of an ‘organized forgetting’. New decolonial approaches like the proposal of an anti-colonial memorial of the Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda in honour of enslaved people or four guided tours about the African Lisbon, focussing on slavery, liberation movements etc., together with public discussion in the media and in the municipal parliament mark an awakening of the (anti-)colonial debate in Lisbon latest in 2018.
MÁRCIO CARVALHO, artist on participatory projects in different countries, gave the audience the chance to reflect on collaborative methodologies of remembrance for an expanded field for the monument. He advocates contextualisation over provenance (as part of the problem and asks “Who has the power and privileges to remember?”. Presenting several of his decolonial performances he took an example of a migrantified neighbourhood in Mannheim (Germany), where he recreated a kiosk as an advice and contact point. He draws a counter-draft to the monument which creates an archive of oral narrations.7
DZIFA PETERS (Lisbon) focussed on intercultural visualities as decolonial approaches to identify and unravel collective imaginaries and tropes of the exotic, racism but also hybrid identities. She critically draws attention on ‘post-memories’, intergenerational memories of the colonialities given from the parents to the kids and the false-memory-syndrome in the context of remembrance and re-narrating the past.
The panel ended with a screening of the collaborative documentary “Barcelona – Ciudad de Acogida”8 including a discussion with the main director CHRISTIN SCHUCHARDT via Zoom. The film shows the situation of refugees in Barcelona, who do not meet the Red Cross criteria, and are dependent on housing projects like Casa Àfrica [sic] and the work of NGOs like Emergencia Frontera Sul. Since refugees are in the status of illegality when selling on the streets, there are repeated police raids and arrests. Refugees and local activists want to publicly discuss structural discrimination, socially prevailing prejudices, racial profiling and put pressure on the city council. By reclaiming the term “top manta”9 they founded their own t-shirt brand “Black Manta”, selling shirts with the statement “legal t-shirts, illegal people”. The documentary also criticises the deportation shelters (CIES), being similar to prisons. For the symposium it offered new contextualisations to discuss structures and processes of global migration and refuge with (neo-)coloniality and racism.
STEPHAN SCHURIG (Chemnitz) raised the question on how to decolonise a city without a (post-)colonial memory in the last panel. On the case of Chemnitz, a former engine of industrialisation in the region, he reflects on why there hasn’t been any research done by local historians, institutions, the university or activist initiatives in contrast to other surrounding cities like Leipzig, Dresden, Jena or Halle. He identifies a general lack of a comprehensive culture of remembrance of German colonial history, colonial crimes and colonial racism. On the local level he misses an examination of the local history of racism, which shows continuities and changes of racist practices through different times and political systems until today. Adding to this he criticises the centre-periphery-dichotomy, in which the (post-/colonial) periphery becomes the object of research significantly less often. Even the local institutions and actors mainly focus on the period of industrial history and the GDR history of Chemnitz (former Karl-Marx-Stadt) but lack on research and remembrance on global and local interdependencies from a colonial history perspective on the city esp. with its economic implications. Since most signs and architectures of urban coloniality got removed, renamed or destroyed during the socialist times, there could be another reason, why the coloniality of Chemnitz remains as a non-history in the memory of the city.
LEONIE PAPRITZ (Chemnitz) she focusses on the intersectionality in post-/decolonial feminism. In her case study on the collective Red de Migración, Género y Desarrollo from Barcelona she addressed the different approaches of white and BIPoC feminism and raised the question: What constitutes decolonial feminism and what makes this group a decolonial one? She shows that non-white feminism is located at the intersection of coloniality and gender, criticizing both mainstream feminist and postcolonial theory, and therefor suggests using situated knowledge (Donna Haraway) as a methodological approach. While white care feminism mainly problematises topics like the reconciliation of family and career, BIPoC care feminism expands these with notions on marginalisation, racialisation and mobilities.
At the end of the conference two round tables on the topic of ongoing decolonial practices in the Iberian space and in Germany reflected antiracist and decolonial approaches in activism on the one hand and postcolonial and decolonial research in science classes in Germany on the other hand.
CORNELIA WÖRMANN (Leipzig) reflected on the mainly voluntary work of the group Leipzig Postkolonial. Founded in 2011 as a part of Kritische Wissenschaft e.V. (Critical Science Association), and part of the network Decolonize! since 2018, the group represents a critical white(ness) perspective on decolonising the cultural remembrance of the city. While the initiative does research and critical educational work on the colonial past, they also address the (neo-)colonial and racist continuities in the narratives and of the practices of institutions and the politics of remembrance (e.g. the sub-group Decolonize Zoo!). While they already work together with political members of the city council, they also criticise the ongoing ignorance of none-white migrantified and racialised groups as representatives and actors in the city. The speech continuously drew attention to the self-positioning and power-critical practices of post- and decolonial activism.
BEATRIZ GOMES DIAS (Lisbon), co-founder of Djass – Associação de Afrodescendentes, discusses proposals by Djass from 2017 to create a representational memorial to the African enslaved people by Portgual at the Largo José Saramago in Lisbon. The artists Grada Kilomba, Jaime Lauriano and Kiluanji Kia Henda made proposals and the votes were held in various public events between December 2019 and February 2020 in locations with a strong presence of African people and people of African descent.10 The aim of the memorial is to change the public narration of colonialism and imperialism and make dehumanisation, enslavement and resistance visible. It is based on three conceptual pillars: a) the recognition of slavery as the main condition of subjugation by the colonial Portugal, b) the resistance against oppression and the recognition of the agency and subjectivity of enslaved people, particularly Africans, and c) the cultural legacy and heritage, including the continuities of current forms of racism and discrimination.
JONAS PRINZLEVE (Lisbon) spoke about decolonial policy instruments and refraiming of the colonial heritage using the example of postcolonial Hamburg. While strong revisionism, nostalgia and a ‘post-colonial aphasia’ prevailed in the 1920s to the 1980s, he identifies a crumbling of ‘colonial amnesia’ since the 2000s. Since then, the visibility of postcolonial initiatives and campaigns by affected communities has increased significantly.
INA-SOPHIE DECKERT (Jena) presented the results of the university seminars “Starting Point 2020: Decolonial and Antiracist Struggles in Ibero-America” at the universities of Jena (Romance Studies) and Chemnitz (European Studies). Central guiding questions that had been raised were: How did monuments become icons that are now being smashed? How had been exclusion and the right to participate discussed in public space? Which voices and positions emerged? Whose memories had been being negotiated? How can the fights against social inequalities look like from decolonial, racism-critical and feminist perspectives? The seminars created a blog11 and a digital map12 where their research findings are publicly available.
JOHANNA PREIßLER and LUCA HIRSEKORN (Chemnitz) finished the symposium by giving an overview of the seminar “Between Cotton, Colonial Goods and Human Zoo – Glocal Colonial Entanglements of the City of Chemnitz from a Postcolonial Perspective”. Students dealt with historical research on colonial goods, consumption, racialised and exoticized advertisement, postcolonial theory and urban research as well as decolonial practices. While Luca Hirsekorn’s research on “Karl-Marx-Stadt postcolonial” about the socialist past of the city of Chemnitz. He pointed out that the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) claimed to be an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and antiracist state. In terms of development politics, he focussed on the economic cooperation between the GDR and socialist brother-states that formerly had been colonized by Germany especially looking at the city partnership between Karl-Marx-Stadt (nowadays renamed to Chemnitz) and Tombouctou in Mali. Johanna Preißler presented her group’s results on historical local actors of the industrialization in Chemnitz in the 19th and 20th century which are linked to the colonial system and practices. Since the history of the city of Chemnitz is heavily intertwined with industries like cotton and textile processing and mechanical and vehicle engineering, local companies were involved in trade of colonial goods. The research highlighted prominent figures in significant industries and smaller fabricators and traders.
This international symposium convened researchers, artists, activists, and students to explore postcolonial and decolonial topics. It highlighted the growing significance of de- and post-colonial perspectives in social and cultural sciences and showcased the intersection of academic theories with activism and artistic work. The event promoted dialogues, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of historical understanding and contemporary social change.
Conference overview:
Elsa Peralta (Lisbon) and Ana Troncoso (Chemnitz): Greetings and introduction
Teresa Pinheiro (Chemnitz): Deconstructing the Empire in Public Art Intervention (Keynote)
Panel 1 – Postcolonial Continuities in the Center and the Periphery A.
Moderation: Doris Wieser (Coimbra)
Viktoria Hohlfeld / Mathilde Honecker (Chemnitz): Lisbon – A postcolonial archaeology. Colonial continuities and postcolonial discourse in Portugal
Simone Frangella (Lisbon): Postcolonial effervescence in Lisbon: Brazilian migration and lived urbanity
Joe Green (Lisbon/Chemnitz): Negotiating the colonial legacy in Lisbon’s street names after the 1974 Revolution
Panel 2 – Postcolonial Continuities in the Center and the Periphery B.
Moderation: Santiago Pérez Isasi (Lisbon)
Gabriela Miranda (Jena): Demands of the Mapuche community in the Estallido Social in Chile – 2019
Felipe Castro (Jena): The social outburst of the popular insurrection: the anti-colonial struggle of the excluded for “democracy”
Jordy Pacheco (Jena): Aesthetic activism in Ecuador´s contemporary Kichwa literature
Conversation with Flávio Almada “Lbc”, Moderation: Jonas Prinzleve
Panel 3 – Migrant Memories and Participation A: Art and Decolonization
Moderation: Stephan Schurig (Chemnitz)
Leonor Rosas (Lisbon): The Gesture and the Stone
Márcio Carvalho (multilocal): Drafting artistic and collaborative methodologies for an expanded field for the monument
Dzifa Peters (Lisbon): Coexisting cultural identities, perspectives and their representations
Presentation and discussion of the Documentary “Barcelona – Ciudad de Acogida” (2020; 55”) with its director Christin Schuchardt
Panel 4 – Migrant Memories and Participation B: Local Activism
Moderation: Ana Troncoso (Chemnitz)
Stephan Schurig (Chemnitz): Postcolonial Chemnitz: How to decolonize a city without a (post-)colonial memory!?
Leonie Papritz (Chemnitz): Red de Migración, Género y Desarrollo: Decolonial perspectives on feminist activism
Guided tour in Lisbon by Elsa Peralta: (De)colonial itinerancies in Lisbon: exclusion, belonging and negotiation in public space
Round Table:
Ongoing Decolonial Practices in the Iberian Space and in Germany A
Moderation: Elsa Peralta (Lisbon)
Cornelia Wörmann (Leipzig): Leipzig Postkolonial: Colonial-historically Reprocessed City Tours
Beatriz Gomes Dias (Lisbon): The Memorial to Enslaved People in Lisbon
Jonas Prinzleve (Lisbon): Decolonial culture politics
Round Table: Ongoing Decolonial Practices in the Iberian Space and in Germany B (Decolonial research in university seminars)
Moderation: Teresa Pinheiro (Chemnitz)
Ina-Sophie Deckert (Jena): Starting Point 2020: Decolonial and antiracist struggles in Ibero-America
Luca Hirsekorn, Johanna Preißler (Chemnitz): Between cotton, colonial goods and human zoo – Glocal colonial entanglements of the city of Chemnitz from a postcolonial perspective
Notes:
1 Silva, Ricardo Jerónimo: Portugal dos Pequenitos: a cristalização de um império ou uma brincadeira de crianças? MIDAS, 6, 2016 http://journals.openedition.org/midas/993 (accessed on November 30, 2022).
2 Barchfield, Jenny: Lisbon museum plan stirs debate over Portugal's colonial past. The Guardian, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/17/lisbon-museum-plan-stirs-debate-over-portugals-colonial-past (accessed on November 30, 2022).
3 The virtual exhibition is still accessible via http://www.racisms-bethencourt.org/. Since the issue on archiving online resources is still a major issue of the scientific practices for upcoming generations of researchers the website has been additionally archived via the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive for this article and can be accessed via https://web.archive.org/web/20221130122755/http://www.racisms-bethencourt.org/.
4 This statement hasn’t been changed since 2014 on the official website and can be found here: https://www.worldofdiscoveries.com/museu/about-us (accessed on November 30, 2022).
5 Rito, Carolina: The Discoveries Museum and the Colonial Gaze in Contemporary Technologies of Display. Wrong Wrong, 9, 2018, https://wrongwrong.net/artigo/the-discoveries-museum-and-the-colonial-gaze-in-contemporary-technologies-of-display (accessed on November 30, 2022).
6 Green, Joe David: A Complacent Memory? Street Name Changes in Lisbon during the Revolutionary Period. IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España – Portugal, 22(79), 2022, S. 63-82, https://journals.iai.spk-berlin.de/index.php/iberoamericana/article/view/2933.
7 The project website is available under https://jungbuschdenkmal.de/ and archived under https://web.archive.org/web/20230626125811/https://jungbuschdenkmal.de/.
8 Barcelona – City of Welcome.
9 La manta means blanket, which merchants put on the ground to present their goods.
10 The proposals and further explanations can be viewed at the Djass website at https://www.memorialescravatura.com.
11 The blog can be accessed at https://blog.hrz.tu-chemnitz.de/iberoamerikadekolonial/ and is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20230413132433/https://blog.hrz.tu-chemnitz.de/iberoamerikadekolonial/.
12 The map can be accessed at https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/de/map/iberoamerika-dekolonial_613531 and is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20230413132447/https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/de/map/iberoamerika-dekolonial_613531.