Colonialism and Transgenerational Memory in Europe

1 /1 Termine

Colonialism and Transgenerational Memory in Europe

Veranstalter
Markus Wurzer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology; Independent MPI research group ‘Alpine Histories of Global Change’)
PLZ
06114
Ort
Halle (Saale)
Land
Deutschland
Findet statt
Digital
Vom - Bis
21.09.2022 - 22.09.2022
Deadline
20.09.2022
Von
Markus Wurzer, Max-Planck-Forschungsgruppe "Alpine Histories of Global Change", Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung, Halle/Saale

In recent years, colonialism, its memory, and diverse legacies have been studied in various ways and contexts, demonstrating how colonial pasts still shape the present. While scholarship has dealt with colonial remnants, for instance in museums and public spaces, another ‘venue’ of collective memory has hardly been addressed: the sphere of family memory.

Colonialism and Transgenerational Memory in Europe

In recent years, colonialism, its memory, and diverse legacies have been studied in various ways and contexts, demonstrating how colonial pasts still shape the present. While scholarship has dealt with colonial remnants, for instance in museums and public spaces, another ‘venue’ of collective memory has hardly been addressed: the sphere of family memory. The lack of research is even more surprising because transgenerational memory is considered to be one of the most important modes of collective memory, especially when it comes to the transmission and construction of a historical consciousness.
‘Ordinary’ colonial agents, soldiers and the like brought home such objects as postcards, photographs or ‘keepsakes’ as well as stories, which, in Europe, families pass down through the generations. This workshop starts from two premises. First, this process significantly shapes the collective imagination of the colonial past. Secondly, family memories are not apolitical: when kept over the generations such narratives and objects pass down interpretations of colonial realities that are based on everyday colonial knowledge and that support particular imageries such as the idea of ‘white’ superiority. In addition, it can be assumed that the myth of the ‘good’ colonialist, as circulated in many European societies, has been so powerful because this historical imagination is rooted within the personal level of the family. Usually, they imagine their relatives who were involved in colonial enterprises as decent and morally upright colonialists and vehemently reject the possibility that they participated in colonial violence. The latter is always externalised and attributed to other groups, other actors, or even other colonial powers.
Therefore, it is high time to address colonialism in transgenerational memory. This workshop will ask how and which memories of a colonial past have been passed down in European families whose forbears were involved in processes of de/colonialisation in the 19th and 20th centuries either as colonisers or colonised.

Programm

Wednesday, 21 September 2022

15.00 – 15.30 CET Introduction by Markus Wurzer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)

15.30 – 17.00 CET Panel 1: Addressing One's Own Family History
Chair: Simone Brioni (Stony Brook University, New York)

Veneta Roberts (University of Brighton): Where do I belong?

Dag Henrichsen (University of Basel): „A Glance at Our Africa“. Archives and memorialization in a multi-generational and transnational (post-)colonial Namibian family

Katy Beinart (University of Brighton): Between a rock and a hard place: the colonial and anticolonial networks of a Jewish diasporic family

17.00 – 17.30 CET Break

17.30 – 19.00 CET Panel 2: Generational In/Difference?Chair: Annika Lems (MPI for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)

Louise Ballière and Wouter Reggers (Université Catholique de Louvain): Belgians in the Congo: The collective and individual memories of families involved in Belgian colonization

Rebecca Orr (European University Institute, Florence): The student left, the quasi-parental authority of the university and memories of colonialism in 1960s Britain

Giuseppe Grimaldi (University of Trieste): “Return at the mirror”: Italians of Ethiopian origins confronting with postcolonial spaces in Ethiopia
Thursday, 22 September 2022

09.00 – 10.00 CET Panel 3: Re/Appropriation of Colonial Narratives
Chair: Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)

Vanina Profizi (Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Paris): Empire inherited: patrimonializing empire through narratives of colonial service as a family tradition in 20th century Corsica

Dennis Yazici (University of Kiel): White Settler Farmer Dynasties and Memories on farm history in Namibia

10.00 – 10.30 CET Break

10.30 – 11.30 CET Panel 4: Family Memory and Restitution
Chair: Markus Wurzer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)

Gracia Lwanzo Kasongo (Université Catholique de Louvain): The objects of an intertwined history: how does restitution decolonize narratives?

Ariane Karbe (Independent) and Hannes Obermair (Eurac Research, Bozen/Bolzano): THE ETHIOPIAN CLOAK – An exhibition, a podcast and many questions

11.30 – 12.00 CET Break

12.00 – 13.00 CET Panel 5: Postcolonial Literature
Chair: Markus Wurzer (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale)

Noreen Kane (University of Cork): The Female Body as Site of Intergenerational Memory in Representations of Italian Colonialism and its Legacy: Maaza Mengiste’s Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King; and Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Little Mother

Nishant K. Narayanan (English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad): Communicating through memory: Familial reconciliation through colonialism

Kontakt

If you are interested in joining, please register with Sophie Schreyer (schreyer@eth.mpg.de).